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CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRJMAGE 
CANTO FOURTH 

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

BYRON 






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CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

CANTO FOURTH 

AND 

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

BY 

LORD BYRON 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
BY CHARLES ELBERT RHODES, A.M., HEAD 
OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE 
LAFAYETTE HIGH SCHOOL, BUFFALO. NEW YORK 




NEW YORK 
CHARLES E. MERRILL COMPANY 



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This series of books includes in complete editions those master- 
pieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use of 
schools and colleges. The editors of the several volumes are 
chosen for their special qualifications in connection with th(! texts 
issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity with 
the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound scholar- 
ship, characterizes the editing of every book in the series. 

In connection with each text, a critical and historical introduc- 
tion, including a sketch of the life of the author and his relation 
to the thought of his time, critical opinions of the work in ques- 
tion chosen from the great body of EngHsh criticism, and, where 
I)ossible, a portrait of the author, are given. Ample explanatory 
notes of such passages in the text as call for special attention are 
supplied, but irrelevant annotation and explanations of the ob- 
vious are rigidly excluded. 

CHARLES E. MERRILL COMPANY. 



Copyright. 1911, 

BY 

CHABLES E. MERRILL CO 



©CI.A283638 



PREFACE 

These poems, and indeed all poems, should be taught 
as literature, and the primary aim should be literary ap- 
preciation. The teacher is often confronted with the 
problem of getting pupils to see the essential difference 
between poetry and prose. This can best be done by 
good interpretative reading and by calling attention to 
the fact that poetry makes more of an emotional than 
an intellectual appeal, that it is largely imaginative and 
suggestive, and that it deals more with great truths 
than with facts. 

All methods which hinder an appreciation of the 
poetry should be avoided. Attention to matters of 
grammar and rhetoric, other than as aids in under- 
standing the poetry, is manifestly out of harmony. 
The Notes in this edition are consequently devoted to 
the explanation of historical allusions which the pupil 
could not well investigate for himself, and to such in- 
terpretative suggestions as should stimulate the pupil 
in his own search for the poetic beauties in which the 
poems abound. 

The fact that there are serious problems connected 
with the life and poetry of Byron only necessitates the 
greater tact and care in dealing with him. Byron 
should not be shunned, but so studied that his life may 

3 



1 PREFACE 

he justly estimated and his works read with i)r()i)or 
discrimination. He is an excellent poet to awaken such 
as need awakening to the charm of poetry. 

' C. E. R. 
Buffalo, Fehruary 1, 1911. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 7 

George Gordon Byron 7 

Critical Opinions 17 

Bibliography 20 

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto Fourth . 21 

The Prisoner of Chillon 93 

Sonnet on Chillon 108 

Notes 109 

Questions and Topics for Study .... 139 



INTRODUCTION 

GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788-1824) 

To understand Lord Byron is almost impossible; to learn 
enough of his life and work to read him with discrimination is 
entirely within the range of possibility. Without entering into 
an analysis of his character, concerning which there has been 
endless controversy, and without seeking to estimate all his 
works, it must suffice here to summarize the facts of the poet's 
life and the characteristics of his poetry, as an introduction 
merely to the pupil's later knowledge of Byron and his works. 

Heredity and Environment. The environment into which 
Byron was born and in which he was brought up was about as 
bad as can be conceived. His family was descended from one of 
the oldest houses of the EngHsh nobihty, of Norse origin; but his 
father was a man of no character, in fact a worthless profligate, 
who had the nickname of "Mad Jack." WilHam, the poet's 
uncle, was known as "the wicked lord," and the grandfather had 
committed murder. The poet's mother, whom "Mad Jack" 
had married for her money, was descended from James I and was 
excessively proud of her Highland ancestry. But she seems to 
have been devoid of such qualities as make a good mother, and 
her impulsiveness, pride, and hysterical tendencies combined to 
spoil her child. She alternately caressed and abused him. She 
even made fun of his clubfoot and called him "a lame brat." 
The boy Byron never knew a true home or real parental affec- 
tion. Such qualities as he naturally inherited were never curbed, 
and such training as might, in a measure, have overcome his 
perilous tendencies, was never given him. One teacher, to be 
sure, did seem to understand the boy and might have done much 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

for him, had not the opportunity boon limited. As it was, his 
kindness and tact were never forgotten by Byron. 

Education. Under such circumstances and in view of the fact 
that the conditions at the university, which he entered in 1805, 
were then conducive to fast Hving rather than to sobriety, it is 
not to be wondered at that his career at Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, was marked by self-will, haughtiness, and passion. After 
throe years of residence at the university, where he did not dis- 
tingui.sh himself as a student, ho was given, the "gentleman's 
(lojrroo" and his formal education was ended. 

First Poems. At the ago of nineteen, while in college, Byron 
{)ublisho(i a volume of poems callorl Hours of Nletiess. The 
Edinburgh Reinew's ridicule of it so exasperated the young pocit 
that, two years later, he publishe<l his brilliant satirical reply, 
"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." This was a bitter 
essay, but it proved popular with the readers of the day who 
liked controversy. In later years Byron repented of this early 
explosion and called it an "evil work of his nonage." In 1809 
Byron took his seat in the House of Lords and three months 
nftorwards went to the continent, whore he traveled with his 
friend Hobhouse for two years. During this tour he gathered 
material for several poems, including the first two cantos of 
Chilfle Harold, The Corsair, and The Ciaour. The publication of 
Childe Harold brought instant fame. A1 this time Byron would 
take no payment for his poems. 

Marriage. During the j^eriod of his phenomenal popularity 
and while he was the itlol of fashionable society, Byron was mar- 
ried to Miss Millbanko, a woman cold, formal, and precise, who 
admired the poet and seemed ambitious to reform him. The 
task of reform was beyond her power, for she lacked the neces- 
sary winning qualities and tact; and within a year after the 
wedding day she left him and returned to her father, alleging 
that she believed her husband insane. When convinced that he 
was not mad, she still persisted in refusing to live with him, 
though Byron several times sought a reconciliation. He often 
asserted that he never knew whv his wife loft him. 



GEORGE GOBDOX BYRON 

Society sided with the wife. The tide not only turned against 
Byron but became a tidal wave of vituperative abuse which 
was more than he could endure. He says of his treatment: 
"The press was active and scurrilous; . . . my name — which 
had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to 
conquer the kingdom for William the Norman — was tainted. I 
felt that, if what was whispered and muttered was true, I was 
unfit for England; if false, England was not fit for me. I with- 
drew; but this was not enough. In other countries — in Switzer- 
land, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the 
lakes — I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I 
crossed the mountains^ but it was the same; so I went a little 
farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the 
stag at bay, who betakes himself to the waters." 

Lest these words of the poet should seem prejudiced, we also 
quote Macaulay upon the same subject: "His country was in 
a bad humor with him. His writings and his character had 
lost the charm of novelty. He had been guilty of the offense 
which, of all offenses, is punished most severely: he had been 
over-praised; he had excited too warm an interest; and the 
public, with its usual justice, chastised him for its own folly. . . . 

"The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as might 
well have shaken a more constant mind. The newspapers were 
tilled with lampoons. The theatres shook with execrations. 
He was excluded from circles where he had lately been the ob- 
served of all observers. All those creeping things that riot in 
the decay of nobler natures hastened to their repast; and they 
were right; they did after their kind. . . . 

"First came the execution, then the investigation, and last of 
all, or rather not at all, the accusation. The public, without 
knowing anything at all about the transactions in his famil}^, 
flew into a violent passion with him, and proceeded to invent 
stories which might justify its anger. Ten or twenty different 
accounts of the separation, inconsistent with each other, with 
themselves, and with common sense, circulated at the same time. 
What evidence there might be for any one of these, the virtuous 



10 INTRODUCTION 

people who repeated them neither knew nor eared. For in fact 
these stories were not the causes, but the effects of th(^ pubUc 
indignation." 

This quotation puts in strong terms what we beUeve to be the 
truth concerning the most tragic event in the Hfe of one whose 
whole hfe was a tragedy and many of whose subsequent wan- 
derings and falls were, in part at least, due to the manner in 
which he was treated by his countrymen. 

Life on the Continent. In April, 1816, Byron left England, 
never to return. I'or the remaining eight years of his life he 
wandered, nomad-like, over much of Kurop(\ wasting himself with 
riotous living. He never recovered from the misanthropy caused 
by his treatment previous to his departure from England. His 
personal disappointment in hfe was deepened by the anguish 
he felt over the failure of the French Revolution to solve the 
great problem of national freedom. His words on PYance in 
<'anto IV of Childe Harold (p. 58) show how seriously he took that 
failure. He was so passionate a lover of liberty that he becam(>^ 
the most revolutionary of all the poets of the romantic school of 
English poetry. He felt that he must break away from all the 
traditions and conventions of organized society — social, religious, 
and political. 

Much of the first year of Byron's life abroad was spent with 
the poet Shelley, whom he met at Geneva, and who did much to 
stimulate his literary activities. But for Shelley's influence some 
of Byron's best poetry would never have been written. Their 
natures were the complements of each other. To this period of 
Byron's life belong The Prisoner of Chillon and the third canto 
of Childe Harold, which is in many respects the best section of 
the poem. 

At Venice, where he resided for three years, Byron wrote the 
fourth canto of Childe Harold, finished Manfred, wrote Beppo, 
and began Don Juan. Here he came under the influence of the 
Countess Guiccioh, who understood him and succeeded in re- 
straining him as few did. She later wrote a biography of Byron. 

The Poems. In 1820 Byron wrote his first dramas, but they 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON 11 

were not successful; he was not a dramatist. Cain, however, a 
dramatic poem which was written the following year, was superior 
to his early work. It reveals marvelous power. Shelley says of 
it, "In my opinion it contains finer poetry than has appeared 
in England since Paradise Lost." Scott speaks in the same strain 
and refers to the poem as an "awful and tremendous drama"; 
concerning Byron he says, "He has certainly matched Milton on 
his own groimd." Still another critic, Mr. Mather, comments 
thus, "Cain is a drama in which Byron depicts the magnificence 
of a soul's revolt, the awfulness of a soul's isolation and despair, 
and the untold desolation of a soul's defeat when powerless in 
the face of irrevocable law. That soul was Byron's, Cain being 
the historic fragment in which he portrayed himself and his 
destiny." The statement is significant in view of the fact that 
Byron considered himself a wanderer upon the face of the earth. 

Manfred may be regarded as a companion to Cain, for in their 
main outlines they are alike. Don Juan is Byron's masterpiece, 
and the character of Don Juan is essentially Byron himself. 
The poem is wonderful and terrible. In it the poet sought re- 
venge upon the world, England especially. It contains passages 
of most exquisite beauty and passages of bitterest satire. It is 
his "own biography written with a pen of fire." 

In 1822 Byron wrote, "If I Hve ten years longer, you will see 
that it is not all over with me. I do not mean in literature — 1 
do not think that is my vocation; but I shall do something." 

Expedition to Greece. Byron was not content to write about 
liberty; he was ever on the lookout for some larger and more 
effective outlet for the passion for universal freedom which con- 
sumed him. During his residence in Italy he had sympathized 
with the Carbonari movement, which aimed to free Italy from 
Austrian rule, but the leading revolutionists were discovered and 
banished and Byron himself escaped only because he was an 
English nobleman. A better opportunity seemed open to him 
in the struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. The Greek com- 
mittee at London enlisted his sympathies and he threw himself 
ydth all hi.^ powers heartily into the struggle. Every penny of his 



12 INTRODUCTION 

income that he could secure from England was devoted to the 
cause. In 1823 he set out for Greece with a vessel containing; 
arms and ammunition and with the equivalent of $20,000 in 
money. His courage and sagacity won him instant recognition 
from the Greek leaders. His "counsels were listened to like 
oracles." 

Mr. Nichol says, "Nothing can be more statesmanlike than 
some of Byron's papers of this and the immediately preced- 
ing period, nothing more noble than the spirit which inspires 
them. . . . Neither trusting too much nor distrusting too 
much, with a clear head and a good will he set about enforcing 
a series of excellent measures. From first to last he was engaged 
in denouncing dissension, in advocating unity, in doing every- 
thing that man could do to concentrate and utilize the dis- 
orderly elements with which he had to work. He occupied him- 
self in repairing fortifications, managing ships, restraining 
license, promoting courtesy between foes, and regulating the 
disposal of the sinews of war." 

The affairs of Greece soon began to improve. Through Byron's 
influence a loan was successfully negotiated in London and other 
volunteers, inspired by his noble example, set out to aid Greece. 

On the morning of January 22, 1824, his thirty-sixth birthday, 
he entered his friend Stanhope's room saying, "You complain 
that I never write any poetry now." Then he read the poem 
beginning, 

" 'T is time this heart should be unmoved. 
Since others it hath ceased to move. 



Awake! (not Greece — she is awake!) 
Awake, my spirit ! think through whom 

Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, 
And then strike home! 



If thou regret'st thy youth, why live? 

The land of honorable death 
Is here: — uj) to the field, and give 

Away thy breath! 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON 13 

" Seek out — less often sought than found — 
A soldier's grave, for thee the best; — 
Then look around, and choose thy ground, 
And take thy rest." 

Death in Greece, 1824. The next spring he contracted a 
fatal illness. Missolonghi was situated on a muddy, malarial 
swamp and Byron's house was situated in the worst possible 
place. The fever seized him; he was in no condition to fight it 
and, in spite of rallies, it gained upon his constitution. His 
medical treatment was unscientific and as the soldier — for such 
we now call him — would not go away for his health's sake, death 
soon overtook him. 

During the course of the fever Byron expressed fear that his 
friends might become infected by watching with him. He was 
also most solicitous for others far away, his sister and his wife. 
In his dying hours he said of Greece, "I have given her my time, 
my means, my health — and now I give her my life! What could 
I do more? Poor Greece, poor town, poor servants!" In one of 
his fits of delirium, evidently thinking he was leading the assault 
on Lepanto, he cried out, ''I^orwards, forwards, — courage — follow 
my example — don't be afraid!" His last words were, ''Now I 
shall go to sleep." He died on April 10, 1824. 

Twenty-two days of universal mourning for Byron were pro- 
claimed in Greece. Shops were closed for three da^s, and even 
the Easter festivities were suspended that prayers might be of- 
fered. The Greeks desired to have the body buried in the Temple 
of Theseus at Athens; other cities contended for the remains; 
but the body was taken to England. As the Dean of Westminster 
refused sepulture there, he was interred in the village church at 
Hucknall, beside his ancestors. Stanhope said, "England has 
lost her brightest genius — Greece her noblest friend." His own 
words, as spoken by the good abbot over the sins of Manfredj 
are appropriate for himself. 

"This should have been a noble creature — he 
Hath all the energy, which would have made 
A goodly frame of glorious elements, 
Had they been wisely mingled." 



14 INTRODUCTION 

" Byron is dead ! " The news meant sorrow as it ran around the 
world. Mrs. Carlyle said, "Had I heard that the sun and moon 
had fallen out of their spheres, it could not have conveyed to me 
the feeling of a more awful blank than did the simple words, 
'Byron is dead.' " Tennyson, speaking long afterward, said, "I 
thought the world was at an end. I thought everything was 
over and finished for everyone — that nothing else mattered." 
Mrs. Shelley's words were heartfelt: "Can I ever forget our 
excursions on the lake, when he sang the Tyrolese hymn, and his 
voice harmonized with winds and waves? Can I forget his atten- 
tions and consolations to me during my deepest misery? Never! " 

Byron's Place in Literature . How shall we estimate Byron's 
(>lusivc character and the poems which so perfectly record its 
many and various phases? That he is to be ranked high among 
our greatest English poets there can be no doubt. He was a born 
|)oet ; he had genius. He was not preeminently an artist, for he 
lacked the painstaking care essential in great artists. He aimed 
rather at force, and he imparted a virility and vitality to English 
poetry that were needed and are sufficient to keep his poetry alive. 
He was a citizen of the world and he gave a cosmopoHtan quality 
to English poetry. On the continent his poetry never suffered 
from the blighting reaction which was so extreme in England. 
But the work of Byron is now finding its true level; it is receiving 
the appreciation that is its due. 

Byron's Personality. Men are seldom described as beautiful, 
but Byron was so called — even by men. "Both face and figure 
were of the finest mould of manly grace." "He had the head of 
a Greek god." His manner was characterized by an exquisite 
charm which always distinguished him. Shelley says that into 
whatever society he went, he became the nucleus of it. His phys- 
ical beauty and the favor it won for him made him vain; his club- 
foot, of which he was morbidly conscious, made him bitter. These 
two qualities — vanity and bitterness — were his worst enemies. 
His rank accentuated his vanity so that it led him far astray; his 
passionate temper sometimes cooperated with his vanity, resulting 
in wild excess; again it seemed in league with his bitterness and 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON 15 

despair ensued. A man so constituted and living in an age of^re- 
volt naturally becomes a man of revolt, who cares not for the con- 
ventions of life. He rather takes pleasure in shocking those who 
overvalue the conventionaHties, so that he often exaggerates his 
own evil tendencies. So it was with Byron. He seemed to have 
a morbid desire for a bad reputation. Posing made him appear 
worse than he was and this complicates the task of estimating 
his character aright. 

While it cannot be truly said that Byron always portrayed 
himself in his poems, it is true that he put more of himself into 
his poems than any other poet has ever done. The characters in 
the poems are invariably Byron made up for the occasion, Byron 
acting a part, a part he can act as any good actor can, but in no 
sense presenting his own true character. This distinction is im- 
portant, for too many have come to believe that Byron always 
pictured himself with photographic precision, when it would be 
more correct to say that he caricatured himself. For instance, 
his life before the pilgrimage recounted in Childe Harold I and II, 
is positively known to have been of a very different character 
from that of the pilgrim. 

Byron was a victim of circumstances, if ever there was one. 
Of course that does not excuse him; but a man of such bad blood 
as he inherited, who knew no good influences during his boyhood, 
who was handsome yet deformed, and who often gave unmis- 
takable evidences of tenderness, generosity, and nobility, — such 
a man deserves much more at the hands of the world than un- 
qualified abuse and condemnation. He sinned, but he was 
sinned against. He did much that was wrong, but no man could 
have written the best that he wrote, and no man could have 
given his life for a cause of freedom as he did, without much in- 
herent goodness. It does no good to blame him; such as he de- 
serve pity and help. His life was a tragedy. The forces working 
against him were too many and too great for him, but in the last 
act, as he dies, we see some faint signs of what might have 
been another denouement had his elements "been more wisely 
mingled." 



16 INTRODUCTION 

Matthew Arnold wrote, 

''When Byron's eyes were shut in death, 
We bowed our heads and held our breath. 
He taught us little; but our soul 
Had felt him like the thunder's roll. 
With shivering heart the strife we saw 
Of passion with eternal law; 
And yet with reverential awe 
We watch'd the fount of fiery life 
Which served for that Titanic strife." 

No words on Byron are more appropriate than those of 
Mrs. Browning in her " Vision of Poets," 

And poor proud Byron ! Sad as grave 

And salt as life; forlornly brave 

And quivering with the dart he drave. 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 

"There was a dauntless Viking spirit in Byron's breast, a sin- 
cere opposition to tyranny and bigotry. This very character- 
istic, which was his deepest and most abiding, which made him 
hate the sham and falseness of himself as well as of others, is in 
both his life and his work the most predominant note. It is on 
this, in fact, that his fame depends; and by strange irony, it was 
bj^ this vigorous, defiant spirit, which scorned and resented cor- 
rection, that he wrought his own downfall. . . . 

"No man in the whole history of English literature has be- 
come so suddenly famous as Byron did on the publication of 
Childe Harold, and no poet has had heaped upon him such 
wrathful denunciations by the virtuous and the zealous mis- 
informed. As a result, he figured in exaggerated, superlative 
terms. Because he was a peer, because he wrote excellent verses, 
because he was beautiful, he had received absurd adulation. 
Because he made certain very serious moral and social slips, be- 
cause he had the grim humor to pretend he was much worse than 
he really was, because scandal-mongers spread almost un- 
imaginable lies about him, he was practically driven from Eng- 
land and has been, since his death, the victim of unjustified 
calumny. . . . 

"In looking back over the hfe of Byron one feels that he was 
just beginning to find himself — to live down the sentimental 
poseur in him and to reveal the strong, sincere spirit under- 
neath — when he was cut short. ... In his nobler moments 
and at what he finally achieved, Byron was the better self of 
his heroes: Harold, Don Juan, Cain, Manfred, Bonnivard — 
the 

Eternal spirit of the chainless mind. 
17 



18 INTRODUCTION 

His friend Shelley, who understood what was best in him, called 
him 'the Pilgrim of Eternity.' " — Hinchman and Gummere, 
Great English Writers. 

"Byron's works present the tragedy of a Titan strugghng 
against forces of heredity, environment and will; he was af- 
flicted with the ivelt-schmerz, world-weariness, of a Hamlet; and 
his utterance was — 

O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right! 

We must confess, I think, that Byron did much of his own de- 
liberate choice to render himself unable to 'lift himself above 
himself.' This fact is clear and we must not blink it; but, while 
we know what's done, we know also what's resisted: we can 
judge, but we must pity such a hfe. A man who could win the 
l)raise of Scott, Goethe, Mazzini, Sainte-Beuve, Arnold, Tenny- 
son, Morley, and Dowden, was surely no charlatan." — Andrew 
J. George. 

"No satirist has surpassed him in the keenness of his irony, 
no controversialist in the violence of his invective, no humorist 
in the grotesqueness of his imagination, no writer of any age in 
the masculine good sense which he can manifest when it so 
pleases him; and yet in all, and through all, there runs an ele- 
ment of depraved egotism, a contempt for virtue curiously allied 
with a remorseful loathing of vice, a perpetual bitterness and 
cynicism which leaves upon the mind the unhappiest and most 
perilous deposits. In truth, Byron was a great but morbid 
genius." — W. J. Dawson, The Makers of English Poetry. 

"Filled with all these (Nature's) images of nobility and great- 
ness, he gave them back to his page with a tone so philosophi- 
cally profound, with a music so thrilling, with a dignity so grace- 
ful and yet so tender, that nothing in poetry can be conceived 
more fascinating and perfect." — W. M. Howitt. 

"He never lost a keen perception of the pure and beauti- 
ful. . . . The passages of thoughtful beauty which are scat- 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 19 

tered over his stormy and impulsive poems — following, as they 
so often do, fierce bursts of passion and the bad idolatry of hate 
and despair — are as pleasing to the eye as starlight after light- 
ning. In the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold, in Don 
Juan, in the narratives and meditations which he has cast in a 
dramatic form, passages might be selected of most witching 
loveliness, of deep pathos, of sad and mournful beauty of senti- 
ment, of aspiration after truth and goodness — of pity and charity 
and faith and humanity and love. . . . Wielding an uncon- 
trolled dominion over language, and profusely gifted with all 
the weapons of sarcasm, hatred, and contempt, he battled 
fiercely in the service of freedom, and knew well how to over- 
whelm its adversaries with denunciations and stormy threats, 
with ridicule and irony, which should eat into their hearts as 
rust into iron." — E. P. Whipple. 

"The superficial inconsistencies of his character must always 
tempt critics who have a liking for difficult problems. He is 
hke Hamlet in this respect. ... In the desolation of his youth, 
in his moodiness, in his distempered variation between the ex- 
tremes of laughter and tears, in his yearning for sympathy, his 
habit of brooding over the mysteries of life, Byron unconsciously 
j)layed the part of Hamlet with the world for a stage, and left a 
kindred problem for the wonder of mankind and the puzzled 
speculation of the curious in such matters." — William Minto. 

"To acquire a right feeling for Byron and his poetry is a dis- 
cipline in equity. It is easy to yield to a sense of his power, to 
the force and sweep of his genius; it is easy to be repelled by his 
superficial insincerity, his license, his cynicism, his poverty of 
thought, his looseness of construction, his carelessness in execu- 
tion. To know aright the evil and the good is difficult. It is 
difficult to feel justly toward this dethroned idol, — presently, 
perhaps, to be re-enthroned, — an idol in whose composition iron 
and clay are mingled with fine gold. But what interests us in 
Byron and in Byron's work is precisely this mingling of noble 



20 INTRODUCTION 

and ignoble, of gold and a base alloy. . . . We must take him 
or leave him as he is, — the immortal spoilt by his age, great and 
petty, weak and strong, exalted and debased. ... In its 
mingled elements Byron's poetry represents at once the mind 
and character of the writer and the temper of his age." — Edward 
Dowden, Princeton Lectures. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

John Nichol: Life of Byron, English Men of Letters Series. 

R, Noel: Life of Byron, Groat Writers Series. 

K. Elzo: Byron, A Biography. 

Matthew Arnold: Essays in Crilicism. 

William Hazlitt: The Spirit of the Age. 

A. C. Swinburne: Studies and Essays. 

Andrew Lang: Letters to Dead Authors. 

William Minto : Literature of the Georgian Era. 

R. Farquharson Sharp: Architects of English Literature. 

Wm. J. Dawson : Makers of English Poetry. 

Gajdey and Young: Principles and Progress of English Poetry. 

J. Marshall Mather: Popular Studies of Nineteenth Century Poets. 

H. A. Beers: English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century. 

Edward Dowden: Studies in Literature. 

Hinchman and Gummere: Lives of Great English Writers. 

Macaulay: Essay on Moore's Life of Byron. 

E. H. Coleridge: Byron's Works. 

J. Scott Clark: A Study of English and American Poets. 

Histories of English Literature, such as, Pancoast's, Moody and 

Lovett's, Scudder's, Simond's, Long's, Newcomber's, and Gar- 

nett and Gosse's. 



CHILDE HAROLD S PILGRIMAGE 

CANTO FOURTH 



I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, 
A palace and a prison on each hand; 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 3 

Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 
O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, 
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred 
isles. 

II 

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, lo 

Rising with her tiara of proud towers 
At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
A ruler of the waters and their powers: 
And such she was; — her daughters had their dowers 
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East is 
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. 
In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. 

21 



22 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

III 

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, 
And silent rows the songless gondoher; 20 

Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, 
And music meets not always now the ear: 
Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. 
States fall, Arts fade — but Nature doth not die, 
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, 25 

The pleasant place of all festivity, 
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy ! 

IV 

But unto us she hath a spell beyond 
Her name in story, and her long array 
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond 30 
Above the dogeless city's vanished sway; 
Ours is a trophy which will not decay 
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, 
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away — 
The keystones of the arch! though all were o'er — 35 
For us repeopled were the sohtary shore. 



The beings of the mind are not of clay; 

Essentially immortal, they create 

And multiply in us a brighter ray 

And more beloved existence: that which Fate 40 

Prohibits to dull life, in this our state 

Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, 



CANTO FOURTH 23 

First exiles, then replaces what we hate; 
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, 
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. 45 

VI 

Such is the refuge of our youth and age, 
The first from Hope, the last from Vacancy; 
And this worn feeling peoples many a page, 
And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye : 
Yet there are things whose strong reality 50 

Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues 
More beautiful than our fantastic sky. 
And the strange constellations which the Muse 
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse: 

VII 

I saw or dreamed of such, — but let them go, — 55 
They came hke truth, and disappeared hke dreams; 
And whatsoe'er they were — are now but so : 
I could replace them if I would; still teems 
My mind with many a form which aptly seems 
Such as I sought for, and at moments found; — 60 
Let these too go — for waking Reason deems 
Such over-weening phantasies unsound. 
And other voices speak, and other sights surround. 

VIII 

I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes 
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind 65 



24 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Which is itself, no changes bring surprise; 
Nor is it harsh to make, nor hard to find 
A country with — ay, or without mankind: 
Yet was I born where men are proud to be, 
Not without cause; and should I leave behind 70 
The inviolate island of the sage and free, 
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea? 

IX 

. Perhaps I loved it well; and should I lay 
My ashes in a soil which is not mine. 
My spirit shall resume it — if we may 75 

Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine 
My hopes of being remembered in my line 
With my land's language : if too fond and far 
These aspirations in their scope incline, — 
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, so 

Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar 



My name from out the temple where the dead 
Are honored by the nations — let it be — 
And light the laurels on a loftier head! 
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me, 85 

'' Sparta hath many a worthier son than he." 
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; 
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree 
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed: 
I should have known what fruit would spring from such 
a seed. 9o 



CANTO FOURTH 25 



XI 



The spouseless Adriatic mourns tier lord; 
And, annual marriage now no more renewed, 
The Bucentaur lies rotting unrestored. 
Neglected garment of her widowhood! 
St. Mark yet sees his Hon where he stood 95 

Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, 
Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued, 
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour 
When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. 

XII 

The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns — 100 
An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt; 
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains 
Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt 
From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt 
The sunshine for a while, and downward go 105 

Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt; 
Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo! 
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe! 

XIII 

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass, 
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun; no 

But is not Doria's menace come to pass? 
Are they not bridled f — Venice, lost and won. 
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, 
Sinks, hke a sea-weed, into whence she rose! 



26 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun 115 
Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes, 
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. 

XIV 

In youth she was all glory, — a new Tyre; 
Her very by-word sprung from victory, 
The " Planter of the Lion/' which through fire 120 
And blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; 
Though making many slaves, herself still free, 
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite; 
Witness Troy's rival, Candia! Vouch it, ye 
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight! 12.5 

For ye are names no time nor tyranny can blight. 

XV 

Statues of glass — all shivered — the long file 
Of her dead Doges are declined to dust; 
But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile 
Bespeaks the pageant of their splendid trust; 130 

Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, 
Have yielded to the stranger : empty halls. 
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must 
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals. 
Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls. 135 

XVI 

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, 

And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, 



CANTO FOURTH 27 

Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, 
Her voice their only ransom from afar : 
See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car i40 

Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins 
Fall from his hands, his idle scimitar 
Starts from its belt — he rends his captive's chains, 
And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. 

XVII 

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, 145 
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot. 
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine. 
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot 
Which ties thee to thy tyrants; and thy lot 
Is shameful to the nations, most of all, iso 

Albion ! to thee : the Ocean Queen should not 
Abandon Ocean's children; in the fall 
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall. 

XVIII 

I loved her from my boyhood; she to me 
Was as a fairy city of the heart, 155 

Rising like water-columns from the sea. 
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart; 
And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art. 
Had stamped her image in me, and even so. 
Although I found her thus, we did not part; leo 

Perchance even dearer in her day of woe. 
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. 



28 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

XIX 

I can repeople with the past — and of 
The present there is still for eye and thought, 
And meditation chastened down, enough, i65 

And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; 
And of the happiest moments which were wrought, 
Within the web of my existence, some 
From thee, fair Venice! have their colors caught. 
There are some feelings time cannot benumb, i7o 
Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and 
dumb. 

XX 

But from their nature will the tannen grow 
Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks. 
Rooted in barrenness, where nought below 
Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks 175 
Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and 

mocks 
The howling tempest, till its height and frame 
Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks 
Of bleak, gray granite into life it came, 
And grew a giant tree; — the mind may grow the 
same. iso 

XXI 

Existence may be borne, and the deep root 
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode 
In bare and desolated bosoms; mute 



CANTO FOURTH 29 

The camel labours with the heaviest load, 
And the wolf dies in silence, — not bestowed iss 

In vain should such example be; if they, 
Things of ignoble or of savage mood. 
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay 
May temper it to bear, — it is but for a day. 

XXII 

All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed, i9o 

Even by the sufferer; and, in each event. 
Ends: — Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed, 
Return to whence they came — with like intent, 
And weave their web again; some, bowed and bent, 
Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time, 195 
And perish with the reed on which they leant, 
Some seek devotion, toil, war, good, or crime. 
According as their souls were formed to sink or climb. 

XXIII 

But ever and anon of griefs subdued 
There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, 200 

Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued; 
And slight withal may be the things which bring 
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling 
Aside for ever: it may be a sound — 
A tone of music — summer's eve — or spring — 2or> 
A flower — the wind— the ocean — which shall wound. 
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly 
bound ; 



60 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

XXIV 

And how and why we know not, nor can trace 
Home to its cloud this Hghtning of the mind, 
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface 210 

The bhght and blackening which it leaves behind. 
Which out of things familiar, undesigned, 
When least we deem of such, calls up to view 
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, 
The cold, the changed, perchance the dead — anew, 215 
The mourned, the loved, the lost — too many! — yet how 
few ! 

XXV 

But my soul wanders; I demand it back 
To meditate amongst decay, and stand 
A ruin amidst ruins; there to track 
Fallen states and buried greatness, o'er a land 220 
Which was the mightiest in its old command, 
And is the loveliest, and must ever be 
The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand; 
Wherein were cast the heroic and the free. 
The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea. 225 

XXVI 

The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome! 

And even since, and now, fair Italy! 

Thou art the garden of the world, the home 

Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; 

Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? 230 

Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 



CANTO FOURTH 31 

More rich than other climes' fertihty; 
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. 

XXVII 

The moon is up, and yet it is not night; 235 

Sunset divides the sky with her; a sea 
Of glory streams along the Alpine height 
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free 
From clouds, but of all colors seems to be, — 
Melted to one vast Iris of the West, — 240 

Where the Day joins the past Eternity; 
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest 
Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest! 

XXVIII 

A single star is at her side, and reigns 
With her o'er half the lovely heaven; but still 245 
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains 
Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhsetian hill, 
As Day and Night contending were, until 
Nature reclaimed her order: gently flows 
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil 250 
The odorous purple of a new-born rose. 
Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within it 
glows, 

XXIX 

Filled with the face of heaven, which, from afar, 
Comes down upon, the waters; all its hues, 



32 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

From the rich sunset to the rising star, 265 

Their magical variety diffuse: 
And now they change; a paler shadow strews 
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day 
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues 
With a new color as it gasps away, 26o 

The last still loveliest, till — 'tis gone — and all is gray. 

XXX 

There is a tomb in Arqua; — reared in air, 
Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose 
The bones of Laura's lover: here repair 
Many familiar with his well-sung woes, 265 

The pilgrims of his genius. He arose 
To raise a language, and his land reclaim 
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes: 
Watering the tree which bears his lady's name 
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. 270 

XXXI 

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died; 
The mountain-village where his latter days 
Went down the vale of years; and 'tis their pride — 
An honest pride, and let it be their praise — 
To offer to the passing stranger's gaze 275 

His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain 
And venerably simple, such as raise 
A feeling more accordant with his strain 
Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane. 



CANTO FOURTH 33 



XXXII 



And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 28o 

Is one of that complexion which seems made 
For those who their mortality have felt, 
And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed 
In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, 
Which shows a distant prospect far away 285 

Of busy cities, now in vain displayed, , 

For they can lure no further; and the ray 
Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday, 

XXXIII 

Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers. 
And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, 290 
Clear as its current, ghde the sauntering hours 
With a calm languor, which, though to the eye 
Idlesse it seem, hath its mortality. 
If from society we learn to live, 
'Tis sohtude should teach us how to die; 295 

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give 
No hollow aid ; alone — man with his God must strive : 

XXXIV 

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair 

The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey 

In melancholy bosoms, such as were 300 

Of moody texture from their earliest day, 

And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay. 

Deeming themselves predestined to a doom 



34 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Which is not of the pangs that pass away; 
Making the sun Hke blood, the earth a tomb, 305 
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. 

XXXV 

Ferrara! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, 
Whose symmetry was not for solitude, 
There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seats 
Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood 310 

Of Este, which for many an age made good 
Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore 
Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood 
Of petty power impelled, of those who wore 314 

The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. 

XXXVI 

And Tasso is their glory and their shame. 
Hark to his strain, and then survey his cell ! 
And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame. 
And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell. 
The miserable despot could not quell 320 

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend 
With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell 
Where he had plunged it. Glory without end 
Scattered the clouds away; and on that name attend 

XXXVII 

The tears and praises of all time; while thine 325 

Would rot in its oblivion — in the sink 



CANTO FOURTH 35 

Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted Hne 
Is shaken into nothing — but the hnk 
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think 
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn; 330 

Alfonso, how thy ducal pageants shrink 
From thee! if in another station born. 
Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn : 

XXXVIII 

Thou, formed to eat, and be despised, and die, 
Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou 335 
Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty! 
He, with a glory round his furrowed brow, 
Which emanated then, and dazzles now. 
In face of all his foes, the Cruscan squire. 
And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow 340 

No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, 
That whetstone of the teeth — monotony in wire! 

XXXIX 

Peace to Torquato's injured shade! 'twas his 
In life and death to be the mark where Wrong 
Aimed with her poisoned arrows, — but to miss. 345 
Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song! 
Each year brings forth its miUions; but how long 
The tide of generations shall roll on. 
And not the whole combined and countless throng 
Compose a mind like thine! though all in one 350 
Condensed their scattered rays, they would not form a 
sun. 



36 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

XL 

Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those, 
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine, 
The Bards of Hell and Chivalry : first rose 
The Tuscan father's comedy divine; 355 

Then, not unequal to the Florentine, 
The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth 
A new creation with his magic line, 
And, like the Ariosto of the North, 359 

Sang lady-love and war, romance and knightly worth. 

XLI 

The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust 
The iron crown of laurel's mimiced leaves; 
Nor was the ominous element unjust, 
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves 
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, 365 

And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; 
Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves. 
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below 
Whate'er it strikes; — yon head is doubly sacred now. 

XLII 

ItaHa! oh Itaha! thou who hast 370 

The fatal gift of beauty, which became 

A funeral dower of present woes and past, 

On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, 

And annals graved in characters of flame. 

Oh, God! that thou wert in thy nakedness 375 



CANTO FOURTH 37 

Less lovely or more powerful, and could claim 
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press 
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; 

XLIII 

Then might'st thou more appal; or, less desired, 
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored 38o 

For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, 
Would not be seen the armed torrents poured 
Down the deep Alps; nor would the hostile horde 
Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po 
Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger's sword 385 
Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, 
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe. 

XLIV 

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him. 
The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind, 
The friend of Tully : as my bark did skim 39o 

The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, 
Came Megara before me, and behind 
^Egina lay, Piraeus on the right, 
And Corinth on the left ; I lay reclined 
Along the prow, and saw all these unite 395 

In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight; 

XLV 

For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared 
Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site. 



38 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Which only make more mourned imd more emieared 
The few last rays of their far-scattered hght, 4ou 

And the crushed rehcs of their vanished might. 
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, 
These sepulchres of cities, which excite 
Sad. wonder, and his yet surviving page 
The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. 405 

XLVI 

That page is now before me, and on mine 
His country's ruin added to the mass 
Of perished states he mourned in their (k^cHnc, 
And I in desolation: all that was 
Of then destruction is: and now, alas! 410 

Rome — Rome imperial, l)ows her to the storm. 
In the same dust and ])lackness, and we pass 
The skeleton of her Titanic form. 
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm. 

XLVII 

Yet, Italy, through every other land 415 

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side! 
Mother of Arts, as once of arms; thy hand 
Was then our guardian, and is still our guide! 
Parent of our Religion! whom the wide 
Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven! 420 
Europe, repentant of her parricide. 
Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, 
Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. 



CANTO FOURTH 39 

XLVIII 

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 
Where the Etrurian Athens claims and keeps 425 
A softer feeling for her fairy halls, 
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps 
Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps 
To laughing life, with her redundant horn. 
Along the banks where smihng Arno sweeps 430 

Was modern Luxury of Commerce born. 
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. 

XLIX 

There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills 

The air around with beauty; we inhale 

The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils 435 

Part of its immortality; the veil 

Of heaven is half undrawn; within the pale 

We stand, and in that form and face behold 

What Mind can make, when Nature's self would 

fail; 
And to the fond idolaters of old 440 

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould: 



We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Reels with its fulness; there — for ever there — 
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, 445 

We stand as captives, and would not depart. 



40 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Away! — there need no words, nor terms precise, 
The paltry jargon of the marble mart, 
Where Pedantry gulls Folly — we have eyes: 
Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherd's 
prize. 450 

LI 

Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? 
Or the more deeply blest Anchises? or, 
In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when Hes 
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War, 
And gazing in thy face as toward a star, 455 

Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, 
Feeding on thy sweet cheek! while thy lips are 
With lava kisses melting while they burn. 
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an 
urn! 



LII 

Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, 46o 

Their full divinity inadequate 
That feehng to express, or to improve. 
The gods become as mortals, and man's fate 
Has moments like their brightest; but the weight 
Of earth recoils upon us; let it go! 465 

We can recall such visions, and create. 
From what has been, or might be, things which 
grow 
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. 



CANTO FOURTH 41 

LIII 

I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, 

The artist and his ape, to teach and tell 470 

How well his connoisseurship understands 

The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell: 

Let these describe the undescribable : 

I would not their vile breath should crisp the 

stream 
Wherein that image shall for ever dwell : 475 

The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream 
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. 

LIV 

In Santa Croce's holy precincts he 

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is 

Even in itself an immortality, 48o 

Though there were nothing save the past, and 

this. 
The particle of those subhmities 
Which have relapsed to chaos: here repose 
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his, 
The starry Galileo, with his woes; 485 

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose. 

LV 

These are four minds, which, like the elements. 
Might furnish forth creation: — Italy! 
Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand 
rents 



42 CHILDE HAROLD'S PirArRIMAGE 

Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, 490 

And hath denied, to every other sky, 
Spirits which soar from ruin : thy decay 
Is still impregnate with divinity, 
Which gilds it with revivifying ray : 
Such as the great of yore, Canova is to-day. 495 

LVI 

But where repose the all Etruscan three — 
l^ante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they, 
The bard of Prose, creative spirit! he 
Of the Hundred Tales of love— where did they lay 
Their bones, distinguished from our conmion clay r.oo 
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust, 
And have their country's marbles nought to say? 
Could not her quarries furnish forth one ])ust? 
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust? 



LVII 

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, 505 

Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore: 
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, 
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore 
Their children's children would in vain adore 
With the remorse of ages: and the crown r.io 

Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, 
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown. 
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled— not thine 
own. 



CANTO FOURTH 43 

LVIII 

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeathed 
His dust, — and lies it not her great among, 515 

With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed 
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue? 
That music in itself, whose sounds are song, 
The poetry of speech? No; — even his tomb, 
Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, 520 

No more amidst the meaner dead find room. 
Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom ! 

LIX 

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; 
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore 
The Caesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, 525 

Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more: 
Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, 
Fortress of falling empire! honored sleeps 
The immortal exile: — Arqua, too, her store 
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, oso 

While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and 
weeps. 

LX 

What is her pyramid of precious stones? 

Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues 

Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones 

Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews 535 

Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse 



44 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead 
Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, 
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread 
Than ever placed the slab which paves the princely 
head. 540 



LXI 

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes 
In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, 
Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies; 
There be more marvels yet — ])ut not for mine; 
For I have been accustomed to entwine 545 

My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, 
Than Art in galleries: though a work divine 
Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields 
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it 
wields 



LXII 

Is of another temper, and I roam 550 

By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles 
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home ; 
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles 
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles 
The host between the mountains and the shore, 555 
Where Courage falls in her despairing files, 
And torrents, swollen to rivers with their gore. 
Reek through the sultry plain, with legends scattered 
o'er, 



CANTO FOURTH 45 

LXIII 

Like to a forest felled by mountain winds; 
And such the storm of battle on this day, seo 

And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds 
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, 
An earthquake reeled unheededly away! 
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet. 
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay 565 
Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet; 
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations 
meet! 

LXIV 

The earth to them was as a rolling bark 
Which bore them to eternity; they saw 
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark 570 

The motions of their vessel; Nature's law 
In them suspended, recked not of the awe 
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the birds 
Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw 574 
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds 
Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no 
words. 

LXV 

Far other scene is Thrasimene now: 

Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain 

Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough ; 

Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain sso 



46 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en — 
A Httle rill of scanty stream and bed — 
A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain; 
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead 
Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters 
red. 585 



LXVI 

But thou, Clitumnus, in thy sweetest wave 
Of the most hving crystal that was e'er 
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave 
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear 
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer 590 
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters. 
And most serene of aspect, and most clear! 
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, 
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters! 

LXVII 

And on thy happy shore a Temple still, 595 

Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, 
Upon a mild declivity of hill. 
Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps 
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps 
The finny darter with the glittering scales, eoo 

Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; 
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails 
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling 
tales. 



CANTO FOURTH 47 

LXVIII 

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place! 
If through the air a zephyr more serene 605 

Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace 
Along his margin a more eloquent green, 
If on the heart the freshness of the scene 
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust 
Of weary life a moment lave it clean 6io 

With Nature's baptism — 'tis to him ye must 
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. 

LXIX 

The roar of waters! — from the headlong height 

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; 

The fall of waters! rapid as the light 6i5 

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; 

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, 

• And boil in endless torture; while the sweat 
Of their great agony, wrung out from this 
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet 62o 

That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, 

LXX 

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round. 

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, 

Is an eternal April to the ground, 025 

Making it all one emerald : — how profound 

The gulf! and how the giant element 



48 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, 
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent 
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent 

LXXI 

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows 63 1 
More like the fountain of an infant sea 
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes 
Of a new world, than only thus to be 
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, 635 

With many windings, through the vale: — Look back! 
Lo! where it comes like an eternity. 
As if to sweep down all things in its track. 
Charming the eye with dread, — a matchless cataract, 

LXXII 

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, 64o 

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn. 
An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge. 
Like hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn 
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 
By the distracted waters, bears serene 045 

Its briUiant hues with all their beams unshorn : 
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene. 
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. 

LXXIII 

Once more upon the woody Apennine, 

The infant Alps, which — had I not before 650 



CANTO FOURTH 49 

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine 
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar 
The thundering lauwine — might be worshipped more ; 
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear 
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar 655 

Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, 
And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, 

LXXIV 

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name; 
And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly 
Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, eeo 

For still they soared unutterably high : 
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye; 
Athos, Olympus, ^Etna, Atlas, made 
These hills seem things of lesser dignity, 
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed 665 

Not 720W in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid 

LXXV 

For our remembrance, and from out the plain 
Heaves Hke a long-swept wave about to break. 
And on the curl hangs pausing. Not in vain 
May he, who will, his recollections rake, 67o 

And quote in classic raptures, and awake 
The hills wdth Latian echoes; I abhorred 
Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, 
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word 
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record era 



50 CHILED HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

LXXVI 

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned 
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught 
My mind to meditate what then it learned, 
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought 
By the impatience of my early thought, 68o 

That, with the freshness wearing out before 
My mind could relish what it might have sought 
If free to choose, I cannot now restore 
Its health ; but what it then detested, still abhor. 

LXXVII 

Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so, 685 

Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse 
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow. 
To comprehend, but never love thy verse; 
Although no deeper moralist rehearse 
Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art, g9o 

Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce. 
Awakening without wounding the touched heart. 
Yet fare thee well — upon Soracte's ridge we part. 

LXXVI 1 1 

Oh Rome, my country. City of the soul! 

The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 695 

Lone mother of dead empires! and control 

In their shut breasts their petty misery. 

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see 

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 



CANTO FOURTH 51 

O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye! 700 
Whose agonies are evils of a day — 
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 

LXXIX 

The Niobe of nations ! there she stands 
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; 
An empty urn within her withered hands, 705 

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; 
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; 
The very sepulchres lie tenantless 
Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, 
Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? 710 

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 

LXXX 

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire, 
Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride; 
She saw her glories star by star expire, 
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride 715 

Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide 
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site: 
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void. 
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light. 
And say,'' here was," or '' is," where all is doubly night? 720 

LXXXI 

The double night of ages, and of her. 

Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap 



52 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

All round us; we but feel our way to err: 
The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map, 
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; 725 
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer 
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap 
Our hands, and cry '' Eureka! it is clear" — 
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. 

LXXXII 

Alas, the lofty city! and alas, 730 

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day 
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! 
Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, 
And Livy's pictured page! but these shall be 735 

Her resurrection; all beside — decay. 
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see 
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was 
free ! 

LXXXIII 

Oh thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, 
Triumphant Sylla! Thou, who didst subdue 740 

Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel 
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due 
Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew 
O'er prostrate Asia; — thou, who with thy frown 
Annihilated senates — Roman, too, 745 

With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down 
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown — 



CANTO FOURTH 53 

LXXXIV 

The dictatorial wreath, — couldst thou divine 
To what would one day dwindle that which made 
Thee more than mortal? and that so supine 750 

By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? 
She who was named eternal, and arrayed 
Her warriors but to conquer — she who veiled 
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed, 
Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, 755 

Her rushing winds — Oh, she who was Almighty hailed! 

LXXXV 

Sylla was first of victors; but our own, 
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell! — he 
Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne 
Down to a block — immortal rebel! See 76o 

What crimes it costs to be a moment free, 
And famous through all ages! but beneath 
His fate the moral lurks of destiny; 
His day of double victory and death 
Beheld him win two realms, and happier, yield his 
breath. 765 

LXXXVI 

The third of the same moon whose former course 
Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day 
Deposed him gently from his throne of force. 
And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. 769 
And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, 



54 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

And all we deem delightful, and consume 
Our souls to compass through each arduous way, 
Are in her eyes less happy than the toml)? 
Were they but so in man's, how different were his 
doom ! 

LXXXVII 

And thou, dread statue, yet existent in 775 

The austerest form of naked majesty, 
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassin's din. 
At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie. 
Folding his robe in dying dignity. 
An offering to thine altar from the queen 78o 

Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die. 
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been 
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene? 

LXXXVIII 

And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome! 
She- wolf ! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart 785 

The milk of conquest yet within the dome 
Where, as a monument of antique art. 
Thou standest :— Mother of the mighty heart, 
Which the great founder sucked from thy wild 

teat, 
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, 790 

And thy limbs black with lightning— dost thou 

yet 
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget? 



CANTO FOURTH 55 

LXXXIX 

Thou dost; but all thy foster-babes are dead— 

The men of iron; and the world hath reared 

Cities from out their sepulchres : men bled 795 

In imitation of the things they feared, 

And fought and conquered, and the same course 

steered, 
At apish distance; but as yet none have, 
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared. 
Save one vain man, who is not in the grave, soo 

But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a 

slave — 

xc 

The fool of false dominion — and a kind 
Of bastard Caesar, following him of old 
With steps unequal; for the Roman's mind 
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould, 805 

With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold, 
And an immortal instinct which redeemed 
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold, 
Alcides with the distaff now he seemed 
At Cleopatra's feet,— and now himself he beamed, 8 10 

xci 

And came — and saw — and conquered! But the man 
Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee. 
Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van. 
Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, 



56 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

With a deaf heart, which never seemed to be sis 
A hstener to itself, was strangely framed; 
With but one weakest weakness — vanity. 
Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed — 
At what? can he avouch or answer what he claimed? 

XCII 

And would be all or nothing — nor could wait 820 

For the sure grave to level him; few years 
Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, 
On whom we tread: For this the conqueror rears 
The arch of triumph; and for this the tears 
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, 825 
An universal deluge, which appears 
Without an ark for wretched man's abode, 
And ebbs but to reflow! Renew thy rainbow, God! 

XCIII 

What from this barren being do we reap? 

Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, 830 

Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep. 

And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale; 

Opinion an omnipotence, — whose veil 

Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 

And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 835 

Lest their own judgments should become too 

bright. 
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too 

much light. 



CANTO FOURTH 57 

XCIV 

And thus they plod in sluggish misery, 
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, 
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, 84o 

Bequeathing their hereditary rage 
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage 
War for their chains, and rather than be free, 
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage 
Within the same arena where they see 845 

Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. 

xcv 

I speak not of men's creeds — they rest between 
Man and his Maker — but of things allowed. 
Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen — 
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, sso 

And the intent of tyranny avowed, 
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown 
The apes of him who humbled once the proud, 
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne; 
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done. 8.35 

XCVI 

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be, 

And Freedom find no champion and no child 

Such as Columbia saw arise when she 

Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? 

Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, 860 

Deep in the unpruned forest 'midst the roar 



58 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 
On infant Washington? Has Earth no more 
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore? 

XCVII 

But France got drunk with l)lood to vomit crime, 865 
And fatal have her Saturnaha been 
To Freedom's cause, in every age and chme; 
Because the deadly days which we have seen, 
And vile Ambition, that built up between 
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, 870 

And the base pageant last upon the scene. 
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall 
Which nips hfe's tree, and dooms man's worst — his 
second fall. 

XCVIII 

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying. 
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind ; 875 
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, 
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind; 
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind. 
Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, 
But the sap lasts, — and still the seed we find 880 

Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North; 
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. 

xcix 

There is a stern round tower of other days, 
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, 



CANTO FOURTH 59 

Such as an army's baffled strength delays, 885 

Standing with half its battlements alone, 
And with two thousand years of ivy grown. 
The garland of eternity, where wave 
The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown: — 
What was this tower of strength? within its cave soo 
What treasure lay so locked, so hid?— A woman's grave. 



But who was she, the lady of the dead, 
Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair? 
Worthy a king's or more — a Roman's bed? 
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear? 895 

What daughter of her beauties was the heir? 
How hved, how loved, how died she? Was she not 
So honored— and conspicuously there. 
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot. 
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot? 9oo 

CI 

Was she as those who love their lords, or they 
Who love the lords of others? such have been 
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say. 
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien. 
Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen, 905 

Profuse of joy— or 'gainst it did she war. 
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean 
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar 
Love from amongst her griefs?— for such the affections 
are. 



60 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

CII 

Perchance she died in youth; it may be, bowed 910 
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 
That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud 
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom 
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom 
Heaven gives its favorites — early death ; yet shed 915 
A sunset charm around her, and illume 
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead, 
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red. 

cm 

Perchance she died in age — surviving all, 
Charms, kindred, children — with the silver gray 920 
On her long tresses, which might yet recall, 
It may be, still a something of the day 
When they were braided, and her proud array 
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed 
By Rome — But whither would Conjecture stray? 925 
Thus much alone we know — Metella died, 
The wealthiest Roman's wife. Behold his love or 
pride ! 

CIV 

I know not why — but standing thus by thee 

It seems as if I had thine inmate known. 

Thou Tomb, and other days come back to me 930 

With recollected music, though the tone 

Is changed and solemn, like a cloudy groan 



CANTO FOURTH 61 

Of dying thunder on the distant wind; 
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone 
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind 935 

Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves be- 
hind; 

cv 

And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks, 
Built me a little bark of hope, once more 
To battle with the ocean and the shocks 
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar 940 

Which rushes on the solitary shore 
Where all lies foundered that was ever dear: 
But could I gather from the wave-worn store 
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer? 
There woos no home, nor hope, nor hfe, save what is 
here. 945 

cvi 

Then let the winds howl on! their harmony 
Shall henceforth be my music, and the night 
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry 
As I now hear them, in the fading light 
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site, 950 

Answering each other on the Palatine, 
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright. 
And sailing pinions. — Upon such a shrine 
What are our petty griefs? — let me not number 
mine. 



62 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

CVII 

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown 955 

Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped 

On what were chambers, arch crushed, column 

strown 
In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steeped 
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped, 
Deeming it midnight: — Temples, baths, or halls? 96o 
Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped 
From her research hath been, that these are walls — 
Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty 

falls. 

CVIII 

There is the moral of all human tales; 
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 965 

First freedom and then glory — when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. 
And History, with all her volumes vast. 
Hath but one page — 'tis better written here. 
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed 970 

All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear, 
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask — Away with words — 
draw near, 

cix 

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, — for here 

There is such matter for all feeling: — Man, 

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear! 975 



CANTO FOURTH 63 

Ages and realms are crowded in this span, 
This mountain, whose obhterated plan 
The pyramid of empires pinnacled. 
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van 
Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled! oso 
Where are its golden roofs? where those who dared to 
build? 

ex 

Tully was not so eloquent as thou, 
Thou nameless column with the buried base! 
What are the laurels of the Csesar's brow? 
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place. 985 

Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face, 
Titus or Trajan's? No — 'tis that of Time; 
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace 
Scoffing; and apostolic statues chmb 
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime, 990 

CXI 

Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome, 
And looking to the stars: they had contained 
A spirit which with these would find a home. 
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned, 
The Roman globe, for after none sustained, 995 

But yielded back his conquests: — he was more 
Than a mere Alexander, and unstained 
With household blood and wine, serenely wore 
His sovereign virtues — still we Trajan's name adore. 



64 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

CXII 

Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place looo 
Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep 
Tarpeian, fittest goal of Treason's race, 
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap 
Cured all ambition? Did the conquerors heap 
Their spoils here? Yes; and in yon field below loof) 
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep — 
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow. 
And still the eloquent air breathes — burns with Cicero! 

CXIII 

The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood: 
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled, loio 
From the first hour of empire in the bud 
To that when further worlds to conquer failed; 
But long before had Freedom's face been veiled. 
And Anarchy assumed her attributes; 
Till every lawless soldier who assailed lois 

Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes, 
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. 

cxiv 

Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, 

From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee, 

Redeemer of dark centuries of shame — 1020 

The friend of Petrarch — hope of Italy — 

Rienzi, last of Romans! While the tree 

Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf, 



CANTO FOURTH 65 

Even for thy tomb a garland let it be — 
The forum's champion, and the people's chief — 1025 
Her new-born Numa thou — with reign, alas! too brief. 

cxv 

Egeria, sweet creation of some heart 
Which found no mortal resting-place so fair 
As thine ideal breast! whate'er thou art 
Or wert, — a young Aurora of the air, 1030 

The nympholepsy of some fond despair; 
Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, 
Who found a more than common votary there 
Too much adoring; whatsoe'er thy birth, 1034 

Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. 

cxvi 

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled 
With thine Elysian water-drops; the face 
Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, 
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, 
Whose green, wild margin now no more erase io4o 
Art's works; nor must the dehcate waters sleep, 
Prisoned in marble; bubbling from the base 
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap 
The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep, 

CXVII 

Fantastically tangled; the green hills 1045 

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass 



1)6 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

The quick-eyed lizard rustles, and the bills 
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass; 
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class, 
Implore the pausing step, and with their dyes loso 
Dance in the soft breeze in a fairy mass; 
The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes. 
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems colored by its 
skies. 

CXVIII 

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, 
Egeria, thy all heavenly bosom beating 1055 

For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover! 
The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting 
With her most starry canopy, and seating 
Thyself by thine adorer, what befell? 
This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting 1060 
Of an enamored Goddess, and the cell 
Haunted by holy Love — the earhest oracle! 

cxix 

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying. 
Blend a celestial with a human heart; 
And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, loes 
Share with immortal transports? could thine art 
Make them indeed immortal, and impart 
The purity of heaven to earthly joys. 
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart — 
The dull satiety which all destroys — io7o 

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys. 



CANTO FOURTH 67 

cxx 

Alas! our young affections run to waste, 
Or water but the desert; whence arise 
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, 
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, ioto 
Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies, 
And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants 
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies 
O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants 
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. loso 

CXXI 

Oh Love, no habitant of earth thou art — 
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee, — 
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, — 
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see 
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be; loss 

The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven. 
Even with its own desiring phantasy. 
And to a thought such shape and image given. 
As haunts the unquenched soul — parched, wearied, 
wrung, and riven. 

CXXII 

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, io90 

And fevers into false creation. Where, 

Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? 

In him alone. Can nature show so fair? 

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare 



68 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, 1095 

The unreached Paradise of our despair, 
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, 
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? 

CXXIII 

Who loves, raves — 'tis youth's frenzy — but the 

cure 
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds 1100 
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure 
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's 
Ideal shape of such ; yet still it binds 
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on. 
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; 1105 
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun. 
Seems ever near the prize — wealthiest when most un- 
done. 

CXXIV 

We wither from our youth, we gasp away — 
Sick — sick; unfound the boon, unslaked the thirst, 
Though to the last, in verge of our decay, 1110 

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first — 
But all too late, — so are we doubly curst. 
Love, fame, ambition, avarice — 'tis the same, 
Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst — 
For all are meteors with a different name, 1115 

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the 
flame. 



CANTO FOURTH 



cxxv 



Few — none — find what they love or could have loved. 
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong 
Necessity of loving, have removed 
Antipathies — but to recur, ere long, 1120 

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; 
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god 
And miscreator, makes and helps along 
Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod. 
Whose touch turns hope to dust, — the dust we all have 
trod. 1125 

cxxvi 

Our life is a false nature : 'tis not in 

The harmony of things, — this hard decree, 

This uneradicable taint of sin, 

This boundless upas, this ail-blasting tree. 

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be 1130 

The skies which rain their plagues on men like 

dew — 
Disease, death, bondage — all the woes we see. 
And worse, the woes we see not — which throb through 
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. 

CXXVII 

Yet let us ponder boldly — 'tis a base 1135 

Abandonment of reason to resign 

Our right of thought — our last and only place 

Of refuge: this at least, shall still be mine. 



70 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Though from our birth the faculty divine 11:^9 

Is chained and tortured — cabined, cribbed, confined, 
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
Too brightly on the unprepared mind, 
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the 
bhnd. 

CXXVIII 

Arches on arches! as it were that Rome, 
I'ollecting the chief trophies of her line, 1145 

Would build uj^ all her triumphs in one dome. 
Her Coliseum stantls; the moonbeams shine 
As 'twere its natural torches, for divine 
Should ))e the light which streams here, to illume 
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine Uoo 

Of contem]:)lation; and the azure gloom 
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume 

cxxix 

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven. 
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument, 
And shadows forth its glory. There is given 1155 
Unto the things of earth, which time hath bent, 
A spirit's feehng, and where he hath leant 
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a powder 
And magic in the ruined battlement, 
For w^hich the palace of the present hour 1160 

Must yield its pomp, and w^ait till ages are its 
dower. 



CANTO FOURTH 71 



cxxx 



Oh Time, the beautifier of the dead, 
Adorner of the ruin, comforter 
And only healer when the heart hath bled! — 
Time! the corrector where our judgments err, ii65 
The test of truth, love — sole philosopher, 
For all beside are sophists — from thy thrift, 
Which never loses though it doth defer — 
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift ii69 

My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift: 

CXXXI 

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine 
And temple more divinely desolate. 
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, 
Ruins of years, though few, yet full of fate : 
If thou hast ever seen me too elate, 1175 

Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne 
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate 
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn 
This iron in my soul in vain — shall they not mourn? 

CXXXII 

And thou, who never yet of human wrong iiso 

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis! 

Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long — 

Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss. 

And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss 

For that unnatural retribution — just, iiss 



72 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Had it but been from hands less near — in this 
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust! 
Dost thou not hear my heart? — Awake ! thou shalt, and 
must. 

CXXXIII 

It is not that I may not have incurred 
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound ii90 

I bleed withal, and had it been conferred 
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound; 
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground : 
To thee I do devote it — thou shalt take wn 

The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found 
Which if / have not taken for the sake — 
But let that pass — I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake. 

cxxxiv 

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now 
I shrink from what is suffered: let him speak 
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, 1200 

Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak; 
But on this page a record will I seek. 
Not in the air shall these my words disperse, 
Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak 
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, 1205 

And pile on human heads the mountains of my curse! 

cxxxv 

That curse shall be Forgiveness, — Have I not — 
Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it. Heaven! — 



CANTO FOURTH 73 

Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? 
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? 1210 

Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, 
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away? 
And only not to desperation driven, 
Because not altogether of such clay 
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. 1215 

CXXXVI 

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy 
Have I not seen what human things could do? 
From the loud roar of foaming calumny 
To the small whisper of the as paltry few, 
And subtler venom of the reptile crew, 1220 

The Janus glance of whose significant eye, 
Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, 
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh. 
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy. 

CXXXVII 

But I have lived, and have not Hved in vain: 1225 
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire. 
And my frame perish even in conquering pain; 
But there is that within me which shall tire 
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire; 
Something unearthly, which they deem not of, 1230 
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre. 
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move 
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love. 



74 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIM AGE 

CXXXVIII 

The seal is set. — Now welcome, thou dread power, 
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here 1235 

Walkest in the shadow of the midnight hour 
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear! 
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear 
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene 
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear 240 

That we become a part of what has been, 
And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen. 

CXXXIX 

And here the buzz of eager nations ran, 
In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause. 
As man was slaughtered by his fellow man. 1245 

And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because 
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws, 
And the imperial pleasure. — Wherefore not? 
What matters where we fall to fill the maws 
Of worms, — on battle-plains or listed spot? i2r,o 

Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. 

CXL 

I see before me the Gladiator lie : 

He leans upon his hands — his manly brow 

Consents to death, but conquers agony. 

And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 1255 

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 



CANTO FOURTH 75 

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now 
The arena swims around him — he is gone, 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch 
who w^on. 12^^ 

CXLI 

He heard it, but he heeeded not— his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away; 
He recked not of the Hfe he lost nor prize. 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, 
There were his young barbarians all at play, i265 

There was their Dacian mother— he, their sire. 
Butchered to make a Roman hohday — 
All this rushed with his blood— Shall he expire 
And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! 

CXLII 

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam; 
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, 1271 
And roared or murmured like a mountain stream 
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; 
Here, where the Roman milhons' blame or praise 
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, 1275 
My voice sounds much— and fall the stars' faint rays 
On the arena void— seats crushed— walls bowed— 
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely 
loud. 

CXLIII 

A ruin — yet what ruin! — from its mass 

Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared; 1280 



76 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass, 
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. 
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared? 
Alas! developed, opens the decay, 
When the colossal fabric's form is neared: i285 

It will not bear the brightness of the day, 
Which streams too much to all years, man, have reft 
away. 

CXLIV 

But when the rising moon begins to climb 
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; 
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, 1290 
And the low night-breeze waves along the air 
The garland-forost, which the gray walls wear. 
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head; 
When the light shines serene but doth not glare, 
Then in this magic circle raise the dead: 1295 

Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread. 

CXLV 

'' While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; 

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall, 

And when Rome falls — the World." From our own 

land 
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall 1300 
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call 
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still 
On their foundations, and unaltered all; 



CANTO FOURTH 77 

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, 
The World, the same wide den — of thieves, or what ye 

will. 1305 

CXLVI 

Simple, erect, severe, austere, subHme — 
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods. 
From Jove to Jesus — spared and blessed by time; 
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods 1309 

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods 
His way through thorns to ashes — glorious dome ! 
Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods 
Shiver upon thee — sanctuary and home 
Of art and piety — Pantheon! — pride of Rome! 

CXLVII 

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts! 1315 

Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads 
A holiness appeahng to all hearts — 
To art a model ; and to him who treads 
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds 
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those 1320 
Who worship, here are altars for their beads; 
And they who feel for genius may repose 
Their eyes on honored forms, whose busts around them 
close. 

CXLVIII 

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light 

What do I gaze on? Nothing: Look again! 1325 



78 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight — 
Two insulated phantoms of the brain: 
It is not so; I see them full and plain — 
An old man, and a female young and fair, 
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein 1330 

The blood is nectar : — But what doth she there, 
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and 
bare? 

CXLIX 

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life. 
Where on the heart and from the heart we took 
Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, 1335 
Blest into mother, in the innocent look, 
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook 
No pain, and small suspense, a joy perceives 
Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook 
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves — 1340 

What may the fruit be yet? — I know not — Cain was 
Eve's. 

CL 

But here youth offers to old age the food, 

The milk of his own gift: it is her sire 

To whom she renders back the debt of blood 

Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire 1345 

While in those warm and lovely veins the fire 

Of health and holy feeling can provide 

Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher 



CANTO FOURTH 79 

Than Egypt's river: from that gentle side 
Drink, drink and hve, old man! Heaven's realm holds 
no such tide. 1350 

CLI 

The starry fable of the milky way 
Has not thy story's purity: it is 
A constellation of a sweeter ray, 
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this 
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss 1355 

Where sparkle distant worlds: — Oh, holiest nurse! 
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss 
To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source 
With Ufe, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. 

CLII 

Turn to the mole which Hadrian reared on high, i36o 
Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles. 
Colossal copyist of deformity, 
Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's 
Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils 
To build for giants, and for his vain earth, i365 

His shrunken ashes, raised his doom : How smiles 
The gazer's eye w^ith philosophic mirth. 
To view the huge design which sprung from such a 
birth! 

CLIII 

But lo! the dome — the vast and wondrous dome. 
To which Diana's marvel was a cell — 1370 



80 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb! 
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle; — 
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell 
The hyaena and the jackal in their shade; 
I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell 1375 

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed 
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed; 

CLIV 

But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee — 
Worthiest of God the holy and the true. i38o 

Since Zion's desolation, when that He 
Forsook his former city, what could be, 
Of earthly structures, in his honor piled, 
Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, 
Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty all are aisled i385 
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. 

CLV 

Enter : its grandeur overwhelms thee not ; 
And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind. 
Expanded by the genius of the spot, 
Has grown colossal, and can only find 1390 

A fit abode wherein appear enshrined 
Thy hopes of immortahty; and thou 
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, 
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 
His Holy of Hohes, nor be blasted by his brow. 1395 



CANTO FOURTH 81 

CLVI 

Thou movest, but increasing with the advance, 
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise. 
Deceived by its gigantic elegance; 
Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize — 
All musical in its immensities; hoo 

Rich marbles, richer painting — shrines where flame 
The lamps of gold — and haughty dome which vies 
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their 

frame 
Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must 

claim. 

CLVII 

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break. 
To separate contemplation, the great whole; 1406 
And as the ocean many bays will make 
That ask the eye — so here condense thy soul 
To more immediate objects, and control 
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart hio 
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll 
In mighty graduations, part by part. 
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, 

CLVIII 

Not by its fault — but thine : Our outward sense 
Is but of gradual grasp — and as it is 1415 

That what we have of feeling most intense 
Outstrips our faint expression: even so this 



82 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice 
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great 
Defies at first our Nature's Httleness, 1420 

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate 
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. 

CLIX 

Then pause, and be enlightened ; there is more 

In such a survey than the sating gaze 

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore 1425 

The worship of the place, or the mere praise 

Of art and its great masters, who could raise 

What former time, nor skill, nor thought could 

plan; 
The fountain of sublimity displays 
Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man 1430 
Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions 

can. 



CLX 

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain — 
A father's love and mortal's agony 
With an immortal patience blending. Vain 1435 

The struggle; vain, against the coiUng strain 
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp. 
The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain 
Rivets the living links, — the enormous asp 
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. 1440 



CANTO FOURTH 83 

CLXl 

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow, 
The God of Hfe, and poesy, and Hght — 
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow 
All radiant from his triumph in the fight; 
The shaft hath just been shot — the arrow bright 1445 
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye 
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might 
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, 
Developing in that one glance the Deity. 

CLXII 

But in his dehcate form — a dream of Love, 1450 

Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast 
Longed for a deathless lover from above. 
And maddened in that vision — are exprest 
All that ideal beauty ever blessed 
The mind with, in its most unearthly mood, 1455 
When each conception was a heavenly guest — 
A ray of immortality — and stood, 
Starhke, around, until they gathered to a god! 

CLXIII 

And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven 

The fire which we endure, it was repaid i46o 

By him to whom the energy was given 

Which this poetic marble hath arrayed 

With an eternal glory — which, if made 

By human hands, is not of human thought; 



84 CHILDE HAROLDS PILGRIMAGE 

And Time himself hath liallowed it, nor laid 14G5 
One ringlet in the dust — nor hath it caught 
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 
'twas wrought. 



CLXIV 

But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song, 
The being who upheld it through the past? 
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. 1470 

He is no more — these breathings are his last; 
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast. 
And he himself is nothing: — if he was 
Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed 
With forms which live and suffer — let that pass — 1475 
His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass. 



CLXV 

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all 

That we inherit in its mortal shroud. 

And spreads the dim and universal pall 

Through which all things grow phantoms; and the 

cloud 1480 

Between us sinks and all which ever glowed. 
Till Glory's self is twiUght, and displays 
A melancholy halo scarce allowed 
To hover on the verge of darkness; rays i484 

Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the 
gaze, 



CANTO FOURTH 85 

CLXVI 

And send us prying into the abyss, 
To gather what we shall be when the frame 
Shall be resolved to something less than this 
Its wretched essence; and to dream of fame, 
And wipe the dust from off the idle name 1490 

We never more shall hear, — but never more, 
Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same: 
It is enough in sooth that once we bore 
These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat was 
gore. 

CLXVII 

Hark — forth from the abyss a voice proceeds, 1495 

A long low distant murmur of dread sound, 

Such as arises when a nation bleeds 

With some deep and immedicable wound; 

Through storm and darkness yawns the rending 

ground. 
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief 1500 
Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned. 
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief 
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. 

CLXVIII 

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? 
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? 1505 

Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low 
Some less majestic, less beloved head? 



86 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, 
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy, 
Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee fled 1510 
The present happiness and promised joy 
Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy. 



CLXIX 

Peasants bring forth in safety. — Can it be. 
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored, 
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, 1515 
And freedom's heart grown heavy, cease to hoard 
Her many griefs for One! for she had poured 
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head 
Beheld her Iris. — Thou, too, lonely lord, 
And desolate consort — vainly wert thou wed! 1520 
The husband of a year! the father of the dead! 



CLXX 

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made; 
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes: in the dust 
The fair haired Daughter of the Isles is laid. 
The love of millions! How we did entrust 1525 

Futurity to her; and, though it must 
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed 
Our children should obey her child, and blessed 
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed 
Like stars to shepherd's eyes: — 'twas but a meteor 
beamed. 1530 



CANTO FOURTH 87 

CLXXI 

Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well: 
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue 
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, 
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung 
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung 1535 

Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate 
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung 
Against their blind omnipotence a weight 
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, — 

CLXXII 

These might have been her destiny; but no, 1540 

Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair, 
Good without effort, great without a foe. 
But now a bride and mother — and now there ! 
How many ties did that stern moment tear! 
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast 1545 
Is linked the electric chain of that despair, 
Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest 
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee 
best. 

CLXXIII 

Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills 

So far, that the uprooting wind which tears 1550 

The oak from his foundation, and which spills 

The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears 

Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares 



88 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

The oval mirror of thy glassy lake ; 
And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears 1555 
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, 
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. 

CLXXIV 

And near, Albano's scarce divided waves 
Shine from a sister valley; — and afar 
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves i56o 

The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, 
'' Arms and the man," whose re-ascending star 
Rose o'er an empire : — but beneath thy right 
TuUy reposed from Rome; — and where yon bar 
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight 1560 

The Sabine farm was tilled, '' the weary bard's " dehght. 

CLXXV 

But I forget. — My Pilgrim's shrine is won, 
And he and I must part, — so let it be, — 
His task and mine ahke are nearly done; 
Yet once more let us look upon the sea; i57o 

The midland ocean breaks on him and me, 
And from the Alban Mount we now behold 
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we 
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold 1574 

Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled 

CLXXVI 

Upon the blue Symplegades: long years — 
Long, though not very many — since have done 



CANTO FOURTH 89 

Their work on both; some suffering and some tears 
Have left us nearly where we had begun: 
Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run; isso 

We have had our reward, and it is here, — 
That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun. 
And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear 
As if there were no man to trouble what is clear. 

CLXXVII 

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, i585 
With one fair Spirit for my minister. 
That I might all forget the human race, 
And, hating no one, love but only her! 
Ye elements! — in whose ennobling stir 
I feel myself exalted — can ye not 1590 

Accord me such a being? Do I err 
In deeming such inhabit many a spot. 
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot? 

CLXXVIII 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 1595 

There is society, where none intrudes. 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: 
I love not Man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 1600 

To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 



90 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

CLXXIX 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 1605 
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own. 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
He sinks into thy depths with ])ubbhng groan, lein 
Without a grave, unknelled, uncofhned, and unknown. 

CLXXX 

His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields 
Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise 
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields 
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, 1615 
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
And sendest him shivering in thy playful spray 
And howling, to his Gods, where haply hes 
His petty hope in some near port or bay, 
And dashest him again to earth : — there let him lay. 1620 

CLXXXI 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 

And monarchs tremble in their capitals, 

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 

Their clay creator the vain title take 1625 

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war — 



CANTO FOURTH 91 

These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. 

CLXXXII 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? ig3i 
Thy waters washed them power while they were free, 
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage! their decay 
Has dried up realms to deserts: — not so thou; i635 
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play — 
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow — 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

CLXXXIII 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, — i64o 

Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm. 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving — boundless, endless, and sublime, 
The image of eternity, the throne 
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime 1645 

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone 
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 

CLXXXIV 

And I have loved thee. Ocean! and my joy 
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 



92 CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy i65o 
I wantoned with thy breakers — they to me 
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea 
Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing fear, 
For I was as it were a child of thee, 
And trusted to thy billows far and near, i65o 

And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 

CLXXXV 

My task is done, my song has ceased, my theme 
Has died into an echo; it is fit 
The spell should break of this protracted dream. 
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit leeo 
My midnight lamp — and what is writ, is writ; 
Would it were worthier! but I am not now 
That which I have been — and my visions flit 
Less palpably before me — and the glow ig64 

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. 

CLXXXVI 

Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been — 
A sound which makes us linger ; — yet — farewell ! 
Ye! who have traced the pilgrim to the scene 
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell 
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell i67o 
A single recollection, not in vain 
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell; 
Farewell ! with him alone may rest the pain, 
If such there were — with you, the moral of his strain. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 



My hair is gray, but not with years, 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears: 
My hmbs are bow'd, though not with toil, 5 

But rusted with a vile repose, 
For they have been a dungeon's spoil. 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are bann'd, and barr'd — forbidden fare; 10 

But this was for my father's faith 
I suffer' d chains and courted death; 
That father perish'd at the stake 
For tenets he would not forsake; 
And for the same his lineal race 15 

In darkness found a dwelling-place; 
We were seven — who now are one. 

Six in youth, and one in age. 
Finish' d as they had begun, 

Proud of Persecution's rage; 20 

One in fire, and two in field. 
Their behef with blood have seal'd; 
Dying as their father died, 
For the God their foes denied; 
93 



94 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

Three were in a dungeon cast, 25 

Of whom this wreck is left the last. 



II 

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, 

In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, 

There are seven columns, massy and gray, 

Dim with a dull imprison'd ray, 30 

A sunbeam which hath lost its way, 

And through the crevice and the cleft 

Of the thick wall is fallen and left; 

Creeping o'er the floor so damp. 

Like a marsh's meteor lamp: 35 

And in each pillar there is a ring, 

And in each ring there is a chain; 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 
With marks that will not wear away, 40 

Till I have done ^\^th this new day. 
Which now is painful to these eyes. 
Which have not seen the sun to rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er, 
I lost their long and heavy score 45 

When my last brother droop'd and died. 
And I lay living by his side. 



Ill 

They chain'd us each to a column stone, 
And we were three — yet, each alone: 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 95 

We could not move a single pace, so 

We could not see each other's face, 

But with that pale and Hvid light 

That made us strangers in our sight: 

And thus together — yet apart, 

Fetter'd in hand, but joined in heart, 55 

'Twas still some solace, in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth. 

To hearken to each other's speech, 

And each turn comforter to each 

With some new hope, or legend old, ' eo 

Or song heroically bold; 

But even these at length grew cold. 

Our voices took a dreary tone. 

An echo of the dungeon-stone, 

A grating sound — not full and free 65 

As they of yore were wont to be: 

It might be fancy — but to me 
They never sounded like our own. 



IV 

I was the eldest of the three, 

And to uphold and cheer the rest 70 

I ought to do — and did — my best 
And each did well in his degree. 

The youngest, whom my father loved. 
Because our mother's brow was given 
To him — with eyes as blue as heaven, 75 

For him my soul was sorely moved: 



96 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

And truly might it be distress'd 
To see such bird in such a nest; 
For he was beautiful as day — 

(When day was beautiful to me so 

As to young eagles, being free) — 
f A polar day, which will not see 

A sunset till its summer's gone. 

Its sleepless summer of long light. 
The snow-clad offspring of the sun! 85 

And thus he was as pure and bright, 
And in his natural spirit gay. 
With tears for nought but others' ills, 
And then they flow'd like mountain rills. 
Unless he could assuage the woe 90 

Which he abhorr'd to view below. 



The other was as pure of mind. 

But form'd to combat with his kind; 

Strong in his frame, and of a mood 

Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 95 

And perish 'd in the foremost rank 

With joy:— but not in chains to pine: 
His spirit wither'd with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline — 

And so perchance in sooth did mine: ion 

But yet I forced it on to cheer 
Those relics of a home so dear. 
He was a hunter of the hills, 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 97 

Had foUow'd there the deer and wolf; 
To him this dungeon was a gulf, los 

And fetter'd feet the worst of ills. 



VI 

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls: 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent no 

From Chillon's snow-white battlement, 

Which round about the wave enthrals: 
A double dungeon wall and wave 
Have made — and like a living grave 
Below the surface of the lake 115 

The dark vault lies wherein we lay. 
We heard it ripple night and day; ,| 

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd; ' 

And I have felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars when winds were high 120 
And wanton in the happy sky; 

And then the very rock hath rocked, I 

And I have felt it shake, unshock'd. 
Because I could have smiled to see 
The death that would have set me free. 125 



VII 

I said my nearer brother pined, 
I said his mighty heart declined, 
He loathed and put away his food; 



98 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, 

For we were used to hunter's fare, 130 

And for the like had little care : 

The milk drawn from the mountain goat 

Was changed for water from the moat. 

Our bread was such as captives' tears 

Have moisten'd many a thousand years, 135 

Since man first pent his fellow-men 

Like brutes within an iron den; 

But what were these to us or him? 

These wasted not his heart or limb; 

My brother's soul was of that mould i4o 

Which in a palace had grown cold. 

Had his free breathing been denied 

The range of the steep mountain's side; 

But why delay the truth? — he died. 

I saw, and could not hold his head, 145 

Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead — 

Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, 

To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 

He died — and they unlock'd his chain. 

And scoop'd for him a shallow grave 150 

Even from the cold earth of our cave, 

I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay 

His corse in dust whereon the day 

Might shine — it was a foolish thought. 

But then within my brain it wrought, 155 

That even in death his freeborn breast 

In such a dungeon could not rest. 

I might have spared my idle prayer — 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 99 

They coldly laugh'd — and laid him there: 

The flat and turfless earth above leo 

The being we so much did love ; 

His empty chain above it leant, 

Such murder's fitting monument! 

VIII 

But he, the favorite and the flower, 

Most cherish'd since his natal hour, 165 

His mother's image in fair face, 

The infant love of all his race. 

His martyr'd father's dearest thought, 

My latest care, for whom I sought 

To hoard my life, that his might be i7o 

Less wretched now, and one day free; 

He, too, who yet had held untired 

A spirit natural or inspired — 

He, too, was struck, and day by day 

Was wither'd on the stalk away. 175 

Oh God! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood: 

I've seen it rushing forth in blood, 

I've seen it on the breaking ocean 180 

Strive with a swoln convulsive motioHj 

I've seen the sick and ghastly bed 

Of sin delirious with its dread: 

But these were horrors — this was woe 

Unmix'd with such — but sure and slow: i85 

He faded, and so calm and meek, 



100 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 

So tearless, yet so tender — kind, 

And grieved for those he left behind; 

With all the while a cheek whose bloom 190 

Was as a mockery of the tomb, 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray — 

An eye of most transparent light, 

That almost made the dungeon bright, 195 

And not a word of murmur — not 

A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 

A little talk of better days, 

A little hope my own to raise, 

For I was sunk in silence — lost 200 

In this last loss, of all the most; 

And then the sighs he would suppress 

Of fainting nature's feebleness, 

More slowly drawn, grew less and less: 

I listen'd, but I could not hear — 205 

I call'd, for I was wild with fear; 

I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread 

Would not be thus admonished; 

I call'd and thought I heard a sound — 

I burst my chain with one strong bound, 210 

And rush'd to him: — I found him not, 

/ only stirred in this black spot, 

/ only lived — / only drew 

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew; 

The last — the sole — the dearest link 215 

Between me and the eternal brink, 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 101 

Which bound me to my faihng race, 

Was broken in this fatal place. 

One on the earth, and one beneath — 

My brothers — both hath ceased to breathe: 220 

I took that hand which lay so still, 

Alas! my own was full as chill; 

I had not strength to stir, or strive, 

But felt that I was still alive — 

A frantic feeling, when we know 225 

That what we love shall ne'er be so. 

I know not why 

I could not die, 
I had no earthly hope but faith, 
And that forbade a selfish death. 230 



IX 

What next befell me then and there 

I know not well — I never knew — 
First came the loss of light, and air, 

And then of darkness too: 
I had no thought, no feeling — none — 235 

Among the stones I stood a stone. 
And was, scarce conscious what I wist, 
As shrubless crags within the mist; 
For all was blank, and bleak, and gray; 
It was not night — it was not day; 240 

It was not even the dungeon-Hght, 
So hateful to my heavy sight. 
But vacancy absorbing space, 



102 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

And fixedness — without a place: 

There were no stars — no earth — no time — 245 

No check — no change — no good — no crime — 

But silence, and a stirless breath 

Which neither was of Hfe nor death ; 

A sea of stagnant idleness, 

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless! 250 



A light broke in upon my brain, — 

It was the carol of a bird ; 
It ceased, and then it came again. 

The sweetest song ear ever heard, ' 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 255 

Ran over with the glad surprise, 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery; 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track; 260 

I saw the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before, 
I saw the glimmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done, 
But through the crevice where it came 265 

That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame, 

And tamer than upon the tree; 
A lovely bird with azure wings. 
And song that said a thousand things. 

And seem'd to say them all for me! 270 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 103 

I never saw its like before, 

I ne'er shall see its likeness more: 

It seem'd like me to want a mate, 

But was not half so desolate, 

And it was come to love me when 275 

None lived to love me so again. 

And cheering from my dungeon's brink. 

Had brought me back to feel and think. 

I know not if it late were free. 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 280 

But knowing well captivity, 

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! 
Or if it were, in winged guise, 
A visitant from Paradise ; 

For — Heaven forgive that thought! the while 285 
Which made me both to weep and smile; 
I sometimes deem'd that it might be 
My brother's soul come down to me; 
But then at last away it flew. 
And then 'twas mortal — well I knew, 290 

For he would never thus have flown. 
And left me twice so doubly lone, — 
Lone — as the corse within its shroud, 
Lone — as a solitary cloud, 

A single cloud on a sunny day, 295 

While all the rest of heaven is clear, 
A frown upon the atmosphere, 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 



104 THE PRiSONER OF CHILLON 

XI 

A kind of change came in my fate, 300 

My keepers grew compassionate; 

I know not what had made them so, 

They were inured to sights of woe. 

But so it was: — my broken chain 

With hnks unfasten'd did remain, 305 

And it was hberty to stride 

Along my cell from side to side, 

And up and down, and th(ni athwart. 

And tread it over every part; 

And round the pillars one by one, 310 

Returning where my walk begun. 

Avoiding only, as I trod, 

My brothers' graves without a sod; 

For if I thought with heedless tread 

My step profaned their lowly bed, 315 

My breath came gaspingly and thick. 

And my crush'd heart felt blind and sick. 

XII 

I made a footing in the wall, 

It was not therefrom to escape, 
For I had buried one and all 320 

Who loved me in a human shape; 
And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child — no sire — no kin had I, 
No partner in my misery; 325 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 105 

I thought of this, and I was glad, 

For thought of them had made me mad; 

But I was curious to ascend 

To my barr'd windows, and to bend 

Once more, upon the mountains high, 330 

The quiet of a loving eye. 



XIII 

I saw them — and they were the same, 

They were not changed like me in frame; 

I saw their thousand years of snow 

On high — their wide long lake below, 335 

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow; 

I heard the torrents leap and gush 

O'er channeird rock and broken bush; 

I saw the white-wall'd distant town, 

And whiter sails go skimming down; 340 

And then there was a little isle. 

Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view; 
A small green isle, it seem'd no more. 
Scarce broader than my dungeon flooi', 345 

But in it there were three tall trees, 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flowers growing, 

Of gentle breath and hue. 350 

The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seem'd joyous each and all; 



106 THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

The eagle rode the rising blast, 

Methought he never flew so fast 

As then to me he seem'd to fly, 355 

And then new tears came in my eye, 

And I felt troubled — and would fain 

I had not left my recent chain; 

And when I did descend again, 

The darkness of my dim abode 360 

Fell on me as a heavy load; 

It was as is a new-dug grave, 

Closing o'er one we sought to save, — 

And yet my glance, too much oppress'd, 

Had almost need of such a rest. 365 



XIV 

It might be months, or years, or days, 

I kept no count — I took no note, 
I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote; 
At last men came to set me free, 370 

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where, 
It was at length the same to me, 
Fetter'd or fetterless to be, 

I learn'd to love despair. 
And thus when they appear' d at last, 375 

And all my bonds aside were cast. 
These heavy walls to me had grown 
A hermitage — and all my own! 
And half I felt as they were come 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 107 

To tear me from a second home: sso 

With spiders I had friendship made, 

And watch'd them in their sullen trade, 

Had seen the mice by moonlight play, 

And why should I feel less than they? 

We were all inmates of one place, 385 

And I, the monarch of each race, 

Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell! 

In quiet we had learn' d to dwell — 

My very chains and I grew friends, 

So much a long communion tends 390 

To make us what we are: — even I 

Regain' d my freedom with a sigh. 



SONNET ON CHILLON 

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! 

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, 

For there thy habitation is the heart — 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind; 
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — 

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 

Their country conquers with their martyrdom. 
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar — for 'twas trod, 
Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonnivard! — May none those marks efface! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



108 



NOTES 

Black figures indicate pages; Roman numerals indicate stanzas; Arabic indi- 
cate lines. 

CHILDE HAROLD 

The pupil should read the first three cantos of Childe Harold, 
of which the fourth canto is presented here for study. If that is 
impossible, the following paragraphs should be noted by way of 
introduction to Canto IV. 

Byron did not intend to publish the first two cantos, which 
were written hastily as a sort of journal of his first trip to the con- 
tinent. The first canto deals with his visit to Spain, toward which 
the eyes of the world were then turned, and the second with 
Greece. These two cantos were written soon after the scenes 
described in them were witnessed and, hence, while they were 
fresh in the poet's mind. 

The third canto, wTitten in 1816, seven years after the second, 
has as its chief themes " The grave of France, the deadly Water- 
loo! " Napoleon, the Rhine, the Rhone, Switzerland, and the Alps. 
It closes with tender and loving words to his daughter, who never 
knew of his love for her until she read the poem after his death. 
Canto III is considered by many the most beautiful of all, and no 
description of it can take the place of reading it. 

I. Throughout the study of the poem, you should try to im- 
agine that you can see what the poet saw, thus securing the local 
point of view; then, thinking the poet's thoughts as he conjured 
up the past, you will be able, in a measure, with the aid of the his- 
torical allusions, to get the poet's mental point of view. Keep 
constantly in mind the fact that Byron seeks to suggest things 
rather than to relate them in detail, and also that the greatest 
appeal is to the imagination. This will help you to live among 
the scenes described and to make the study of the poem a real 
experience, rather than a task. 

The first eighteen stanzas deal with Venice, whose history so 
impressed Byron that he also wrote, under its inspiration, the 
'* Ode on Venice," " Beppo — a Venetian Story," and the two 

109 



no 



NOTES 



dramas, Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari. The "Ode on 
Venice," should be read. 

21, 1. The Bridge of Sighs connects the Ducal Palace with 
the State Prison across the canal and was so named because the 
condemned crossed it to meet their doom. Byron's words in The 



i^^^fil^ 




Italy 



Tivo Foscari, " which few repass," are significant. It was an ap- 
propriate place from which to contemplate the past of the city. 

8. The winged Lion. The Lion of St. Mark and the emblem 
of the city. 

9. Her hundred isles. Venice is built upon three large and 
114 small islands, which are connected by 378 bridges. 

10. A sea Cybele. Cybele was the mother of the Olympian 
gods. She was represented as wearing a turreted crown, and was 
usually enthroned between two lions. 



NOTES 111 

15. Why was the East called " exhaustless "? 

22, 19. Tasso's echoes are no more. Torquato Tasso (1544- 
95) was ranked next to Dante among the Italian epic poets. The 
reference is to the famous song of the gondoliers from his Jerusalem 
Delivered. 

24. But nature doth not die. When Byron contemplates the 
ruins of what man has built, he turns to nature with a sense of 
relief. Be on the alert for evidences of this attitude in Byron's 
other writings, in Arnold, Tennyson, and others. 

25. How Venice once was dear. Read, in proof of this state- 
ment, Wordsworth's sonnet " On the Extinction of the Venetian 
Repubhc." 

27. The masque of Italy. A carnival; not the masque that is 
a form of the drama. 

31. Dogeless. The office of doge, the highest in the Venetian 
repubhc, was abolished in 1797 when Napoleon conquered the 
city. 

33. Rialto. The famous bridge, and for a long time the only 
bridge, across the Grand Canal. It takes its name from one of 
the islands. Near it was the Merchants' Exchange of Shake- 
speare's The Merchant of Venice. 

34. Pierre. A character in Otway's Venice Preserved. What 
does Byron mean by saying that these characters are " the key- 
stones of the arch"? 

V— X. These six stanzas develop the thought touched upon in 
the last Hues of stanza iv, and furnish one of the numerous pas- 
sages in which the poet stops to reflect upon what he has seen. 
He becomes somewhat didactic at first, and then drifts, as was 
natural with him, into autobiographical musings. Study these 
passages carefully, for they reveal much concerning Byron's mind 
and character. Byron's opinions should always be weighed, for 
some will be found wanting. 

His reference to " these beings of the mind " reveals one of his 
characteristic moods — he was a man of many moods — and shows 
how characters in books and the people of his own dreams af- 
fected him. Ponder over stanzas v and vi until you feel that you 
have mastered their contents. 

23, 46. Why does Byron designate youth and age as periods 
when these creatures of the mind furnish a refuge? 

VII. What do you conjecture Byron was thinking of when, in 
this stanza, he vaguely recalled some of the realities which ' ' out- 
shine our fairyland," of which he says, " They came hke truth, 
and disappeared like dreams "? Was it some lost ideal? Read 
Tennyson's " Merlin and the Gleam," and then answer the above 
question. 



112 NOTES 

64. I've taught me other tongues. Byron spoke Italian like 
a native and was moderately skilled in French, German, Latin, 
and Greek. Byron was cosmopolitan — at home everywhere. Yet, 
in spite of all that his country had done to make him hate her, 
he here shows great depth of patriotic feeling. Though he often 
said he would never return to England, he as often expressed a 
longing to see his native land again. 

25, 91. Spouseless Adriatic. The poet now returns to his 
objective consideration of Venice. While Venice maintained her 
maritime supremacy, it was the custom of the doge, annually on 
Ascension Day, to marry the Adriatic by throwing a ring into 
the sea from his state barge Bucentaur. Some relics of this vessel 
are still preserved at Venice. 

95. St. Mark. The patron saint of Venice. The saint still 
" sees " the emblem, but an empty, powerless one. 

97. The proud Place where an Emperor sued. The Place 
was in front of the cathedral where Frederic Barbarossa (referred 
to as the Swabian in the next stanza), who had opposed the pa- 
pacy, was forced to yield to Pope Alexander III. 

100. Austrian. Napoleon took Venice from Austria in 1805. 
In 1814 it was restored to her, but in 1866 it was ceded to Italy. 

106. Lauwine. A corrupted form of the German word for 
avalanche. 

107. Blind old Dandolo! He became doge in 1192, at the age 
of eighty-five. \\'hcn Dandolo took Constantinople, at the age of 
ninety-seven, he himself led the attack. 

109. Steeds of brass. Brought from Constantinople by Dan- 
dolo. 

111. Doria's menace. When the Venetians were overcome 
by the Genoese in 1379, they sent word to their conquerors 
promising to agree to any terms provided they were allowed 
their independence. Pietro Doria, the Genoese commander, re- 
plied: " On God's faith, Gentlemen of Venice, ye shall have no 
peace . . . until we have first put a rein upon these unbridled 
horses of yours, that are upon the porch of your evangelist St. 
Mark." 

113. Thirteen hundred years of freedom. To be exact 1,365 
years, for Venice was founded in 452 when Attila led the Huns 
into Italy. Byron also speaks of the same long period in his 
" Ode on Venice," 

Thirteen hundred years 
Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears. 

114. Sinks, like a sea-weed. This may refer to the settling of 
the Venetian buildings, which are on piles, or it may be that Byron 



NOTES 113 

used the words metaphorically and referred to the deterioration 
of the people. Shelley, however, undoubtedly meant himself to 
be taken literally in his " Lines Written among the Euganean 
Hills," in which he says: 

Sun-girt city! thou hast been 
Ocean's child, and then his queen; 
Now is come a darker day, 
And thou soon must be his prey. 

26. 118. A new Tyre. The old Tyre, according to the 
prophet Ezekiel, was built upon islands and was, like Venice, a 
beautiful city. See Ezekiel xxvi-xxviii. 

120. The Planter of the Lion. Byron has a note on this nick- 
name for the Venetians, and derives the word pantaloon from 
Piantaleone. St. Panteleone w^as a patron saint of Venice and 
his name came to be a nickname for a Venetian. 

123. Europe's bulwark. Wordsworth calls Venice " the safe- 
guard of the West." 

124. Troy's rival, Candia. Candia was a town on the island 
of Crete. It could be regarded as the rival of Troy only in that it 
held out against its enemies for twenty-four years, whereas the 
siege of Troy lasted but ten. 

125. Lepanto's fight. Referring to the victory of the Vene- 
tians over the Turks in the Bay of Lepanto in 1571. 

XV. The poet has selected details and arranged them so as 
to make a very effective stanza. The " sumptuous pile " is the 
Ducal Palace and "■ foreign aspects " indicates the Austrian 
soldiers. 

27, 138. Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse. Byron cites 
the story from Plutarch's Life of Nicias. When the Athenians 
were forced to yield at Syracuse, 413 b. c, Plutarch says that 
some of the Athenian captives were granted their freedom be- 
cause they recited passages from Euripides. Note the vividness 
of Byron's description, which he secures by the use of the present 
tense. 

XVII. In this stanza Byron applies to Venice the illustration 
given in the preceding stanza. Albion, " the white island," was 
the earliest name of England and by that name, according to 
tradition, she was designated to Brutus by Diana. Byron is again 
didactic, calling his country's attention to the fact that she might 
fall in spite of her " waterj^ wall." 

XVIII. This stanza concludes Byron's reference to Venice. 
He shows how his love had dated from boyhood, when he had 
probably read Otway's Venice Preserved, Mrs. Radcliffe's ro- 
mance The Mysteries of Udolpho, Schiller's Ghost-seer, and Shake- 



114 NOTES 

speare's The Merchant of Venice. His love was not impaired, in 
spite of the changes he found in Venice. 

28, XIX. In this stanza the poet again becomes subjective 
and speaks of what the imagination does for him. He gives in 
an echo, as it were, one more loving tribute to Venice, which he 
leaves with regret. 

Byron's intimate friend and fellow poet, Shelley, gives, in 
" Euganean Hills," his testimony of what Venice was to Byron, — 

That a tempest-cleaving swan 
Of the songs of Albion, 
Driven from his ancestral streams 
By the might of evil dreams, 
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean 
Welcomed him with such emotion 
That its joy grew his, and sprung 
From his lips like music flung 
O'er a mighty thunder-fit, 
Chastening terror: — what tho' yet 
Poesy's unfailing River 
Which thro' Albion winds forever 
Lashing with melodious wave 
Many a sacred poet's grave, 
Mourn its latest nursling fled? 

XX-XXIV. In this group of five stanzas Byron philosophizes 
upon life and states his conclusions concerning suffering and sor- 
row. Study all he says, but do not accept his conclusions. Your 
own may be different and better. Some of Byron's statements 
are sound and worthy of acceptance; some are not. Try to dis- 
criminate. As the tannen, a kind of fir-tree, may grow to giant 
proportions where nothing else can live, so the mind may develop. 
As the beasts learn to endure, so should we, " of nobler clay." 

29, Stanza XXII carries into higher regions the thought of the 
two preceding stanzas. Suffering destroys us or is destroyed by 
us " according as [our] souls were formed to sink or climb." 

Stanza XXIII is especially Byronic. Can you tell why? Note 
that Byron states indisputable facts, but that his inferences are 
often tainted with his own misanthropy. There were many spec- 
tres " whom no exorcism [could] bind " for Byron, as for many 
others; but not for all, — not for Browning, for instance. 

E. H. Coleridge calls attention to Brow^ning's words m his 
" Bishop Bloughram's Apology," and they are in accord with 
Byron's sentiments in this passage. But they do not express 
Browning's philosophy. 



NOTES 115 

Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 

A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 

A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 

And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 

As old and new at once as nature's self, 

To rap and knock and enter in our soul. 

Browning's conception of life was that a real victory is possi- 
ble, and he trusts that it will come. Hear him in " Rabbi Ben 
Ezra: " 

Grow old along with me! 

The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made. 



Then, welcome each rebufT 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 

Each sting that bids nor sit, nor stand, but go! 

Be our joy three-parts pain! 

Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! 

'Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what Thou shalt do!' 

So, take and use Thy work. 

Amend what flaws may lurk, 

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! 

If in the midst of Byron's beautiful descriptions we become too 
conscious of his pessimism and misanthropy, it is well to turn to 
other poets, like Browning and Tennyson, whose sane optimism is 
a sufficient corrective. Let Byron give you all he can; if he some- 
times fails to give all you demand, remember that others may 
supplement him without detracting from his own message. 

30, XXV. Note how Byron checks himself and returns from 
things abstract to the consideration of Italy in the concrete. He 
gives a general program of what he intends to accompHsh and, 
incidentally, pays a beautiful tribute to Italy, 

Wherein were cast the heroic and the free. 
The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea. 

But even here he cannot refrain from speaking of himself dis- 
paragingly as a " ruin amidst ruins." Why do you think he did 
it? 

XXVI. Note, in this stanza, the elements of beauty amid the 
ruins. 



116 NOTES 

31. XXVII-XXIX. These three stanzas are an exquisite pic- 
ture of an ItaHan sunset and should be read and re-read for the 
sake of the beauty of the scene as you see it through the poet's 
eyes. Note the sensory appeal, the delicate word painting, and 
the skill with which we are made to see " the one vast Iris of the 
West " fade into gray. 

32, XXX-XXXIV. These stanzas are devoted to Petrarch, 
the great Italian lyric poet and sonneteer whose tomb inspires 
Byron's reflections. 

262. There is a tomb in Arqua; — reared in air. Arqua is a 
small village thirteen miles southwest of Padua, where Petrarch 
died in 1374. His sarcophagus is said to be " reared in air," he- 
cause it is supported by pillars of red marble. (Look up the 
names Petrarch and Laura in the Century Dictionary or in an en- 
cyclopedia.) 

264. Laura's lover. Laura, whom Petrarch loved, was a 
French woman residing at Avignon. 

266. He arose to raise a language. Petrarch and Boccaccio 
practically created the Italian language, much as Chaucer created 
the English. 

267. His land reclaim. Petrarch sought, through Rienzi, to 
aid the cause of freedom in Italj'. 

269. Watering the tree. The laurel, dear to Petrarch because 
it reminded him of Laura. 

XXXI. The simple tomb of Petrarch is more appropriate than 
a great monument would be. Milton's epitaph for Shakespeare 
is: 

What needs my Shakesp«-are for his honored bones 
The labor of an age in piled stones? 

33. XXXIII, XXXIV. Since Petrarch died in a quiet place, 
Byron enlarges upon the thought suggested. Here again we see 
evidences of the poet's tendency toward brooding, for he speaks 
of some 

Deeming themselves predestined to a doom, 
Which is not of the pangs that pass away. 

34, XXXV-XXXIX. These stanzas deal with the town of 
Ferrara and the poet Tasso. 

311. Este. The house of Este was one of the most famous of 
the old princely families of Italy. See Tasso's Jerusalem De- 
livered. 

314, 315. Those who wore the wreath which Dante's brow, 
etc. Tasso and Ariosto. 



NOTES 117 

316. And Tasso is their glory and their shame. It is believed 
that Alphonso II had Tasso confined as a lunatic in a narrow 
cell because of his political intrigues and of his love for Alphonso's 
sister. Later authorities contend, however, that the poet was 
actually insane. Whatever the truth, Byron has here, and in his 
" Lament of Tasso," written nobly according to what he believed 
the truth. 

35, 339. Cniscan squire. This was the Academy della Crusca 
of Florence, whose object was the purifying of the national lan- 
guage. It condemned Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. 

340. Boileau. The famous French critic who attacked the 
public for liking Tasso. 

342. Monotony in wire. In this way Byron refers to the heroic 
couplet which Boileau used. 

36, XL, XLI. These two stanzas give Byron's appreciation 
ot Ariosto. 

354. Bards of Hell and Chivalry. Dante and Ariosto. 

357. The southern Scott. Byron thus designates Ariosto, and 
it is a high tribute, for Byron greatly admired Scott. The Ariosto 
of the North (1. 359) is, of course, Scott. 

364. What is " the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves "? 

XLII, XLIII. The Apostrophe to Italy. These stanzas, 
Byron tells us, are a free translation of the famous sonnet by 
Filicaja. 

37, 389. The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind. 
Servius Sulpicius wrote to Cicero to console him at the time of the 
death of his daughter Tullia. Servius wrote from Athens, and 
Byron, returning from Constantinople, went over the same route 
which Servius had taken. Concerning it he writes: " On my rv- 
turn from Asia as I was sailing from ^^gina towards Megara, I 
began to contemplate the prospects of the countries around me: 
^gina was behind, Megara before me; Piraeus on the right, Cor- 
inth on the left ; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now 
he overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could 
not but think presently within myself: Alas! how do w^e poor 
mortals fret and vex ourselves if any of our friends happen to die 
or be killed, whose life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so 
many noble cities he here exposed before me in one view." 

38, 406. That page is now, etc. The page, also referred to in 
1. 404 as " his yet surviving page, was from Cicero's Letters. 

XLVII. Note the comprehensiveness of the tribute to Italy 
in this stanza. 

39, 425. Etrurian Athens. Florence, on the Arno, is thus 
designated. Etruria is the old name for what is now called Tus- 
cany. Florence is called " Athens " because, in the modern worlds 



118 NOTES 

she held a position, with respect to art, such as Athens had once 
held in the ancient world. 

431. Modem Luxury of Commerce. The refined luxury of 
Florence was derived from success in trade. 

432. Buried Learning rose. Florence produced several men 
prominent in the Renaissance; among them were Petrarch, Ficino, 
and Poliziano. 

XLIX-LIII. These five stanzas are devoted to the statue of 
Venus de'Medici, which stands in the Tribune of the Uffizi Gal- 
lery. Byron calls the statue undescribable, nor does he attempt 
any direct description. He does not try to point out any details 
to help us to see its beauty of form. He does better. He tells of 
the effect of the beauty and so enhances its power. 

We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Reels with its fulness. 

Byron professed to care little for art; if his profession was 
true, his magnificent enthusiasm over this statue is all the more 
remarkable. 

40, 448. Paltry jargon. The stereotj^ped cant of the statuary 
vendors. 

449. Where Pedantry gulls Folly. Refers to the success of 
those who use such jargon; the trash is sold to those who think 
they are buying something of real value. 

450. Dardan Shepherd. Paris was the Dardan Shepherd 
who bestowed the prize for beauty upon Venus (Aphrodite) to 
the sorrow of Hera and Athena. 

452. More deeply blessed Anchises. Venus was the wife of 
Anchises. 

454. Lord of War. Mars. 

463. Man's fate, etc. Browning spoke of man as " a God 
though in the germ." As the gods sometimes become like mor- 
tals, so mortals have godlike moments. 

41, 470. Ape. One who imitates. 

LIV-LVI. These three stanzas deal with Santa Croce, which 
Byron called the Westminster Abbey of Italy, and with the dead 
who are buried there. 

478. Santa Croce. In a letter written in 1817, Byron said of 
the church of Santa Croce: " The tombs of Machiavelli, Michael 
Angelo, Gahleo, and Alfieri make it the Westminster Abbey 
of Italy. I did not admire these tombs — beyond their con- 
tents. . . . What is necessary but a bust and name? and per- 
haps a date. ... All your allegory and eulogy is infernal." 



NOTES 119 

Consult an encyclopedia for full information concerning Angelo, 
Alfieri, Machiavelli, and Canova. 

Byron says: " Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Ital- 
ians, without waiting for three hundred years, consider him as ' a 
poet good in law.' His memory is the more dear to them because 
he is the bard of freedom; and because, as such, his tragedies can 
receive no countenance from any of their sovereigns." 

42, 496. But where repose all the Etruscan three? Why were 
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio not buried at Florence? 

505. Dante sleeps afar. He was buried in Ravenna. 

506. Like Scipio, etc. Scipio had given orders that he must be 
buried at Liturnum where he, a voluntary exile, had spent many 
years. It is said that there was once upon his tomb an inscrip- 
tion saying, " Ungrateful country, you shall not have my bones." 
Dante had said something similar. 

She denied me what was mine — my roof, 
And shall not have what is not hers — my tomb. 

507. Thy factions. The Guelf and Ghibbeline parties. 

511. Petrarch's laureate brow. He was crowned with the 
laurel in Rome in 1341, though he had gained most of his renown 
in another country — France. His grave, at Arqua, was dese- 
crated by Florentine ghouls. 

43, 519. Even his tomb, uptorn, etc. The ecclesiastical au- 
thorities, whom Byron calls " hyaena bigots," would not leave 
anything to remind future generations of Boccaccio, who had 
satirized churchmen. " They had their revenge on Boccaccio, 
and Byron has had his revenge on them." 

525. Caesar's pageant. Whatever doubt there may be as to 
the meaning of these words is cleared up by the lines in Don Juan: 

And this omission, like that of the bust 
Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius. 

At the funeral of Junia, who was the wife of Cassius and the 
sister of Brutus, the busts of Brutus and Cassius were not allowed 
to be carried in the procession because they had participated in 
the assassination of Julius Caesar. They w^ere " conspicuous by 
their absence." So Byron says Santa Croce is more noted because 
she has not the dust of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 

532. Her pyramid of precious stones. The reference is to the 
costly tombs of the Medici in the Medici chapel, a part of the 
church of San Lorenzo in Florence. Byron says in a letter to 
Murray: " I went into the Medici chapel, — fine frippery in great 
slabs of various expensive stones, to commemorate fifty rotten 



120 NOTES 

and forgotten carcasses." It is said that the poet was so disgusted 
to see such costly monuments for such characters, that he failed 
to notice some of the famous work of Michael Angelo on the 
tombs. 

The last four lines of stanza Ix contain another tribute to the 
poets who need no costly monuments. 

44, LXI. Here we have the transition from art to nature and 
Byron's statement, " For I have been accustomed to entwine my 
thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, than with Art in gal- 
leries." He feels that he is constitutionally incapable of doing 
justice to " a work divine." It was Shelley who had infused in 
him a love of nature. All his best descriptions of nature were 
written after the beginning of his intimacy with his brother poet. 

542. Amo's dome of Art's most princely shrine. Mr. E. H. 
Coleridge is probably correct in saying the Duomo is intended. 
His note on this line is: " The Duomo, crowned with Brunel- 
leschi's cupola, and rich in sculpture and stained glass, is, as it 
were, a symbol of Florence, the shrine of art." 

LXII-LXV. These stanzas deal with Lake Trasimene. Byron 
describes a scene in the Carthaginian wars and then a contrasting 
picture of the lake as he saw it. Hero Hannibal, by strategy, de- 
feated a whole Roman army. The Romtin historian, Livy, says 
that the struggle was so intense that the fighters did not notice an 
earthquake which occurred at the time of the battle. Words- 
worth also makes mention of it in one of his sonnets: 

When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came, 
An earthquake, mingling with the battle's .shock, 
Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock, 
Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim. 

46, 584. Sanguinetto. The place was named from the bloody 
battle. 

LXVI-LXVIII. In these stanzas Byron gives the reflections 
occasioned by his view of Clitumnus, a branch of the Tiber, and 
the ruins of a temple upon a hill by its banks. This river is often 
referred to in pastoral poetry. Byron says of it that no scenery, 
even in Italy, is more worthy of description. 

590. Milk-white steer. According to Pliny, the waters of 
some streams possessed the power of turning white the cattle that 
drank from them. 

GOO. The finny darter with glittering scales. In a letter to his 
friend Murray Byron says: " On my way back from Rome, close 
to the temple by its banks, I got some famous trout out of the 
river CHtumnus, the prettiest little stream in all poesy." 

LXVIII. What do you learn from this stanza concerning the 



NOTES 121 

effect of nature upon Byron? Does he here show love of nature 
or something more? 

47, LXIX-LXXII. This is one of Byron's most exquisite de- 
scriptions. Read it with unusual care that you may realize its 
beauty. Try to imagine what the poet sought to express. Note 
the emotional appeal of the exclamatory outbursts. 

Byron combines into one description the views he had of the 
falls at two different times. He says: " I saw the Cascata del 
Marmore of Terni twice, at different periods — once from the sum- 
mit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower 
view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only; 
but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth 
all the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together." 

620. Phlegethon. One of the four rivers of Hades. Tozer 
calls attention to the fact that the poet seems to have in mind 
spirits in torment as he describes the agonizing waters. 

48, LXXni-LXVII. Here we have only a slight description 
of the Apennines (which would seem grand to the poet had he not 
seen so many greater mountains), and not much about Horace, 
whom Byron admires. We have, however, an interesting com- 
ment on the wrong way of teaching poetry. Hence, this passage 
is of biographical interest and of pedagogical value. Byron here 
confesses to his early dislike for classic poetry, and attributes it 
to the wrong methods by which he was taught. The poetry was 
presented to him — as it is sometimes presented to pupils now — 
as a means of acquiring information, and not as a means of gain- 
ing power to perceive the inner spiritual beauty of poetry. If 
poetry is properly taught, it becomes a source of the greatest de- 
light. 

49, 654. Jungfrau. A peak of the Alps. It is no longer un- 
trodden, for Alpine climbers have often ascended its heights. 
Byron places some important scenes of his Manfred on this peak. 

For other proper names in these stanzas consult a dictionary 
of proper names or an encyclopedia. 

665. Soracte's height. This mountain, upon which there was 
once a temple to Apollo, was mentioned by Virgil and Horace, 
and hence it becomes the occasion of Byron's remarks on the 
study of poetry. 

50, LXXVni-LXXXII. This long passage deals with Rome 
in her desolation. These stanzas show us Byron at his best, for 
here he is really eloquent and even noble. The whole section of the 
poem should be read over and over again. The fact that the allu- 
sions are more easily interpreted, since Roman history is more 
familiar than that of the rest of Italy, will be a new source of de- 
light. 



122 NOTES 

694. Oh, Rome, my country. City of the soul ! Why did Byron 
so address Rome? Can you suggest why that city should appeal 
more strongly to him than Venice or Florence? Why must the 
" orphans of the heart " turn to Rome? 

51, 703. The Niobe of nations! Niobe has been called " the 
beau-ideal of grief." After the death of her twelve children, she 
was turned into a stone, from which ran water. The legend has 
been a favorite with artists, and the most notable work was that 
attributed to Scopas — though some say it was by Praxiteles — a 
copy of which Byron had probably seen at the Uffizi gallery at 
Florence. It represents Niobe horror-stricken at the death of her 
children, who are being struck dead by the unseen darts of Apollo. 
By boasting of her twelve children, she had offended Apollo and 
Artemus, who had only two. From these few facts Byron's mean- 
ing can be easily understood, though he did not adhere to the de- 
tails of the classic group. 

707. The Scipios* tomb. In 1780 this tomb was discovered on 
the Appian Way. It was soon rifled, probably with the hope of 
finding ornaments buried with the dead. 

711. Rise, . . . and mantle her distress. Referring to the 
frequent inundations of the Tiber. One hundred thirty-two in- 
undations were recorded down to 1870, when the river rose thirty 
feet above its normal height. 

LXXX. So great has been the destruction wrought by " The 
Goth, the Christian, Time, War, P'lood, and Fire," that identi- 
fication is almost impossible. 

LXXXI. The construction in the first two lines of this stanza 
is faulty. There seems a confusion of figures, yet it is possible 
that Byron referred to steering the camel across the desert. The 
meaning is clear: the theories of the antiquarian at Rome prove 
as unreliable as a mirage. 

52, 73"). These shall be her resurrection. Rome has gone; 
Rome's men of letters shall make her hve again. Cicero, Vir- 
gil, and Livy do indeed make her live in our schools and col- 
leges. 

LXXXIII-LXXXVI. These stanzas contain the comparison 
between Sylla and Cromwell and reflections suggested by them 
both. 

Stanza LXXXIII gives the main facts of Sylla's life. He was 
given the title " Felix " for his continual good luck, which Byron 
refers to in the words, " whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel." 
He did not wait to settle disputes after his victory over Marius, 
but at once went to war with Mithridates and conquered him. 
He was appointed dictator, which gave him power over the sen- 
ate; then he retired to private life. He was held in high repute 



NOTES 123 

because of this act ; otherwise he might have been counted only a 
monster. 

53, LXXXV. This stanza characterizes the career of Cromwell, 
who dissolved the Long Parliament and brought Charles I to the 
block. He died on the anniversary of his two victories at Dunbar 
and at Worcester. 

54, LXXXVII. And thou, dread Statue! The statue of Pom- 
pey at whose feet " great Csesar fell." The present statue, how- 
ever, is probably not the original one. Byron asks Nemesis, the 
god of retribution, if the death of Csesar was in retribution for the 
death of Pompey. Were these two really victors, or only puppets 
in the hands of the god of retribution? 

LXXXVIII. The bronze " Wolf of the capitol " in the Palace 
of the Conservators is beheved to be ancient, dating from the 
fifth century B. C. Byron says she still guards her immortal 
cubs, for they live in story, but other Romans no longer share 
her protection. 

55, LXXXIX. Napoleon still lived when Byron wrote this 
poem. He was the only man who could be compared with the 
Roman conquerors for he alone had approached the same " su- 
premacy." 

In Canto III Byron has given a full characterization of Napo- 
leon and stanzas xxxvi-xli of that canto should be read. 

XC. Yet Napoleon was but a " bastard Caesar." In spite of 
being fascinated by Cleopatra, as Hercules had been by Omphale, 
Csesar was not withheld from his career of conquest. 

And now himself he beam'd, 

And came and saw and conquered! 

But Napoleon, coquetting with inordinate ambition, which was 
worse than Caesar's infatuation, and as vain as ambitious, fell 
short in his achievement. Byron's figure of the flood of blood, 
without an ark for man's refuge, is bold and most suggestive. His 
closing prayer is a fitting conclusion: " Renew thy rainbow, God! " 

56, XCIII-XCVII. Here again we see the reflective Byron. 
It was natural, after his reference to Napoleon — suggested by the 
thought of Caesar — to review the state of affairs in Europe after 
the fall of Napoleon. Whether we agree with the poet or not, 
we must give him credit for serious thought upon a great subject. 
Read these stanzas in the light of the history Byron knew and of 
the history of the period since he wrote, and then form your own 
opinion of the reaction in 1815. 

Byron's language here is strong. Is it too strong? Answer this 
question with special reference to stanza xcvii. 

Byron was a great admirer of Washington because he was a 



124 NOTES 

friend of freedom. He asks whether it is possible for Freedom 
ever again to arise suddenly, as Pallas sprang full-armed from 
the head of Jove. He pays the following tribute to Washington: 

Where may the wearied eye repose 

When gazing on the Great; 
Where neither guilty glory glows 

Nor despicable state? 
Yes — one — the first — the last — the best, 
The Cincinnatus of the West, 

Whom envy dared not hate. 
Bequeath the name of Washington, 
To make man blush there was but one. 

58, XCVIII. This is a notable stanza. Byron does not 
want his dark picture of France to convey the idea that Freedom 
is dead. If the Saturnalia there have been fatal to Freedom's 
cause, there is still hope elsewhere — in England, which Byron 
here calls the North. Note Byron's analysis of freedom. As was 
natural for a poet, he used a succession of figures, which, if clearly 
imderstood, make a vivid mental picture. It is worth while to 
pause here until one gets the poet's meaning; it gave a message 
of hope and in time it proved truly prophetic. 

In The Giaour Byron used similar words: 

For Freedom's battle once begun, 
Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son, 
Though baffled oft, is ever won. 

XCIX-CV. These stanzas contain Byron's speculations in- 
spired by the tomb of Csecilia Metella, on the Apjiian Way near 
Rome. 

884. Fortress. The low, round tower had been used as a for- 
tress in earlier days, and well it might be, for it is sixty-three feet 
in diameter. 

59, C. But who was she? The fact that so little is known of 
the woman — only that she was the daughter of Metellus Creticus 
and the wife of Crassus — is enough to arouse Byron's imagination. 

CI. Here the poet makes inquiry concerning her character. 
\A'as she like Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi whom she called 
her jewels; or was she Hke Cleopatra? 

60, 914. Doom. Byron has in mind the Greek saying, 
" Whom the gods love die young." 

917. The Hesperus of the dead. As Hesperus, the evening 
star, is the harbinger of night, so the hectic flush presages death. 

918. Consuming. Hollow, wasting. 



X 



NOTES 125 

918 Autumnal leaf -like red. In Manfred Byron says: 

There's bloom upon her cheek; 
But now I see it is no living hue, 
But a strange hectic — like the autumnal red 
Which Autumn paints upon the perished leaf. 

cm. The poet ceases his conjectures; they are useless. Yet 
he adds one more; did Crassus bury her so magnificently because 
he loved her, or because of his own pride? 

CIV-CV. Tombs possessed a peculiar charm for Byron. (Here, 
again, he becomes reflective.) Like Shakespeare, he " bodies 
forth the forms of things unknown." He seeks " a little bark of 
hope " and wonders if he would know where to steer it, but ends 
with the thought that, for him, there is no home, no hope, no 
life, but only the grave. His thinking only deepens his sadness. 
He could have said from the heart the words of Gray, " The paths 
of glory lead but to the grave." 

61, CVI-CIX. These four stanzas deal with the Palatine Hill 
and the ruins which now mark it. Finding no consolation as he 
reviews the past, Byron turns to the Palatine whose desolation is 
so great that his own troubles seem small. 

— Upon such a shrine 
What are our petty griefs? — let me not number mine. 

Note stanza cvi well for its details of description. Such was 
the confusion among the ruins of the Palatine that it was impos- 
sible to distinguish temples from baths or halls. All that re- 
search had decided w^as that they were walls. 

62, Stanzas civi and cix give the reflections of the poet. He 
compares Man with the Palatine in ruins. The Imperial Mount 
is an epitome of human history which ever repeats itself — '' His- 
tory, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page," — and words 
are unnecessary with such an object lesson before one's eyes. 

Line 975, " Man, thou pendulum betwixt a smile and a tear," 
is one of the most frequently quoted of all the Unes Byron has 
written. 

Lost one should get a morbid view of man from this passage, 
it is well to recall what others have said. Shakespeare makes 
Hamlet exclaim: " What a piece of work is man! How noble in 
reason! How infinite in faculty; in form, and moving, how ex- 
press and admirable! in action, how hke an angel! in apprehension, 
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! " 

63, CX, CXI. The columns of Phocas and of Trajan. As a 
matter of fact the column was no longer nameless in 1817, when 



126 NOTES 

Byron visited Rome. It had been identified in 1813 as that of 
Phocas, A. D. 608. 

989. Apostolic statues climb. There is a statue of St. Peter 
on the column of Trajan and one of St. Paul on that of Marcus 
Aurehus. 

990. Whose ashes slept sublime. It was once believed that 
the ashes of Trajan were deposited in a globe held in the hand of 
his statue; the belief, however, was not well founded. 

995. The Roman globe. The Roman Empire. 

999. We Trajan's name adore. Trajan was considered the 
best of the emperors. Hyron mc^ans that even noir he is adored. 
He was the last to rule over the empire as a whole. 

64, 1000. Rock of Triumph. The Capitoline Hill. On this 
hill the triumphal processions ended. Here the heroes were " em- 
braced," that is, welcomed home after their conquests. 

1002. Tarpeian, fittest goal of Treason's race. Criminals 
were thrown from this rock. 

1022. Rienzi. Cola di Rienzi (1313-1354) was ambitious to 
free his country from the oppression of the nobles and to establish 
a republic. For a time he was succes.sful, and in 1347 he was pro- 
claimed tribune and liberator of the Holy Roman Republic. Suc- 
cess, however, turned his head and popular feeling changed toward 
him. He was killed in 1354 (hn-ing a revolt. P(»trarch in 1340, 
when he was crowned laureate at Rome, met Rienzi and is said 
to have shared his enthusiasms. See Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi — 
The Last of the Tribunes. 

65, 1026. New-bom Numa. The king, Numa Pompilius, the 
great lawgiver of early Rome. 

CXV-CXIX. These four stanzas deal with Byron's imagined 
story of Egeria and give his description of " Egeria's Grotto." 
According to Roman mythology, Egeria instructed Numa con- 
cerning the form of worship he should introduce. Byron con- 
ceives her to be " a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth." 
His description of her grotto, to which he devotes two stanzas, 
is most picturesque. Then, taking advantage of the fabled love 
between Egeria and Numa, he briefly pictures a love scene in the 
grotto, wondering if she could " impart the purity of Heaven to 
earthly joys." This is one of Byron's loftiest imaginative pic- 
tures. 

1031. Nympholepsy. An ecstatic vision. The Greeks be- 
lieved that when anyone had seen a nymph, her image remainecj 
with him making him long for an impossible ideal. In stanza cxxii 
Byron speaks of "the unreached Paradise of our despair." The 
line throws light on nympholepsy. 

67, CXX-CXXVII. This long passage is essentially Byronic. 



NOTES 127 

It gives the poet's view of love, but it is love seen through the 
eyes of a misanthrope. Byron never experienced real love and 
did not know what it is; he could not therefore describe it. This 
passage, then, is to be taken as a pathetic attempt to analyze 
what the writer saw from a wrong point of view and, hence, saw 
falsely. Without doubt the poet has in mind his unfortunate 
marriage. 

For a moment, in the Egeria passage, Byron seemed to be on 
the heights and expressed himself as one on the heights. He spoke 
of an ideal; but then came the reaction so characteristic of his 
thought. 

70, CXXVIII-CXLV. This long passage deserves special 
study; it is one of Byron's most notable ones. The first two 
stanzas (cxxvii, cxxxix) and the last three (cxliii-cxlv) are largely 
descriptive of the Coliseum. Stanzas cxl-cxlii are devoted to the 
statue of the gladiator and to the thoughts suggested by it. The 
rest of the passage is largely personal and therefore of great bio- 
graphical value. Keeping these facts in mind, study the passage 
as a whole, until 3^ou comprehend it fully. Then, give special at- 
tention to such details as require further thought. 

1144-1147. Arches on arches! . . . her Coliseum stands. 
The Coliseum, or Flavian Amphitheater, was the largest building 
at Rome. It was capable of seating 80,000 people. The first three 
stories were built upon arches. Between the arches, eighty to 
each story, stood three-quarter columns. About one-third of the 
structure remains. Much has been carried away for building pur- 
poses. 

71, 1162. Oh Time. The thought of how Time has dealt with 
these ruins makes Byron digress and ask a boon of Time for him- 
self (1. 1170). He asks Time, if they who have dealt with him so 
unjustly, shall not mourn (1. 1179). He believes they will. 

1180, 1181. And thou, . . . great Nemesis! Nemesis, the 
god of retribution, is also summoned to avenge him by meting out 
to the British public due punishment. 

1184. Orestes. The Furies pursued Orestes because he had 
killed his mother to avenge the death of his father. On this pas- 
sage Lady Byron comments: " It has been argued that Byron 
inserted these stanzas with the deliberate purpose of diverting 
sympathy from his wife to himself." 

72, 1196. Not taken for the sake — The dash doubtless refers 
to his sister, whom Byron dearly loved, and, hence, would not 
mention in this connection. But for her, he might have sought 
vengeance. 

1202. But on this page a record will I seek. Byron confesses 
that his poem shall be his vengeance. In a measure, too, he spoke 



128 NOTES 

truly. There are several erasures and changes in the manuscript 
of this stanza, showing that the poet found it hard to express him- 
self. 

CXXXV. Here is unstinted self-praise. What the poet said, 
however, was true. There may be some question as to the taste 
which would allow the poet to use such words; but when we con- 
sider his feelings, we may be inclined to pardon him. 

Between this stanza and the next Byron had in his manuscript 
the following Unes which he later eliminated: 

If to forgive be heaping coals of fire — 
As God hath spoken — on the heads of foes, 
Mine should be a volcano, and rise higher 
Than, o'er the Titans crushed, Olympus rose, 
Or Athos soars, or blazing Etna glows; — 
True, they who stung were creeping things; but what 
Than serpent's teeth inflicts with deadlier throes? 
The lion may be goaded by the gnat. — 
Who seeks the slumberer's blood? The eagle? No, the bat. 

In a word, the poet had much to forgive. 

73, 1221. Janus glance. Janus looked both ways. The al- 
lusion is significant with reference to Byron's critics. 

CXXXVII. In spite of melancholy, near to desperation, there 
emerges and, the poet says, will remain, a hope unconquerable. 

There is that within me which shall tire 
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire; 
Something unearthly which they deem not of. 

Compare Shelley's, 

Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. 

And Browning's third stanza of the Epilogue to Asolando, 

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake. 

74, 1234. The seal is set. — Now welcome, thou dread power. 
The poet here evidently means that his complaint is over and his 
resolution made. The spirit of the past, as felt by one beholding 
the CoUseum, is welcome, since it brings a peace where before 



NOTES 129 

have been only confusion and discontent. '' The solemn scene 
derives from thee a sense so deep and clear that we become a part 
of what has been, and grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen." 
To a considerable degree, this contemplative frame of mind re- 
mained with the poet during the last years of his life. 

1252. Gladiator. The statue of the dying Gaul. Here Byron's 
description is most vivid and effective. Note all that is merely 
suggested by the picture. 

Concerning this passage Ruskin writes: " That passage is 
noble primarily because it contains the utmost number that will 
come together into the space of absolutely just, wise, and kind 
thoughts. But it is more than noble; it is ■perfect, because the 
quantity it holds is not artificially or intricately concentrated, 
but with the serene swiftness of a smith's hammer-strokes on hot 
iron." Matthew Arnold is equally enthusiastic in his praise of 
Byron's power to handle scenes of human suffering. The deep 
pathos here depicted is unrivaled. 

Line 1267, " Butchered to make a Roman holiday," has become 
almost hackneyed with use. 

75, 1266. Their Dacian mother. The people of Dacia were 
noted for their courage and were much prized in the amphitheatre, 
for the Romans liked to witness a good fight. In his 'The De- 
formed Transformed " Byron says: 

Made even the forest pay its tribute of 
Life to their amphitheatre, as well 
As Dacia men to die the eternal death 
For a sole instant's pastime, and pass on 
To a new gladiator! 

1269. Arise! ye Goths, etc. Here the poet, from the view- 
point of an actual spectator of the gladiator's death, calls upon 
the Goths to avenge it vigorously, as history shows them to have 
done. 

1279. From its mass. Alluding to the fact that the Coliseum 
was used as a stone quarry. 

76, 1288. The rising moon begins to climb. Byron, and 
others, have enriched literature with references to the effect of 
moonlight upon the Coliseum. In Manfred he says: 

Upon such a night 
I stood within the Coliseum's wall, 
Midst the chief relics of Almighty Rome; 
The trees which grew along the broken arches 
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars 
Shone through the rents of ruin. 



130 NOTES 

1293. Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head. Byron 
compares the trees growing on the Coliseum to the laurel which 
Csesar wore especially, says Suetonius, because it concealed his 
baldness. 

1297. While stands the Coliseum, etc. Words ascribed to the 
Venerable Bede, the great Saxon historian. 

77, CXLVI-CXLVII. The Pantheon was built b. c. 27, and 
is the best preserved of all the old Roman buildings. It consists 
of two parts, a porch supported by sixteen Corinthian columns 
and behind it, and yet a part of it, the rotunda, or round temple. 
The niches which once contained the statues of the gods now 
contain busts of great Italians, Raphael among the rest. It was 
consecrated as a church in 609. 

CXLVIII-CLI. Byron's note is: " This and the next three 
stanzas allude to the story of the Roman daughter, which is called 
to the traveller by the site, or pretended site, of that adventure, 
now shown at the church of S. Nicolo in Carcere." Pliny and 
others relate the legend. 

79, 1351 . The starry fable of the milky way. The story is that 
when Mercury held the infant Hercules up to Juno's breast, that 
he might drink in divinity, the goddess pushed him away, and 
some drops of the milk fell into the void and became a multitude 
of stars — the Milky Way. 

CLII. What is now known as the Castle of St. Angelo was 
originally built as a mausoleum for the ashes of the Emperor 
Hadrian. It is composed of a square basement surmounted by a 
low circular tower 1,000 feet in circumference. 

CLIII-CLIX. These seven stanzas are evidence of a splendid 
attempt to describe the indescribable — St. Peter's. The poet is 
wholly conscious of the magnitude of his task and consequently 
begins with a most appropriate exclamation, such as one would 
naturally make upon first seeing the great building: " But lo! 
the dome — the vast and v/ondrous dome," etc. The first stanza 
of the seven is made elTective by means of a series of comparisons 
with other great edifices, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus and of 
St. Sophia at Constantinople. Stanza cliv continues the com[)ar- 
ison, n)ore vaguely, with an allusion to the Temple at Jerusalem 
and ends with two lines of fine climax. The entire passage should 
be studied until the pupil feels that he has fully caught the poet's 
whole conception. Note especially stanza cUx. It is unusual with 
Byron. 

82, CLX. The Laocoon group is in the Vatican Museum. 
Look up Laocoon in the Classical Dictionary. In this stanza 
Bvron is at his best. Why? 

83, CLXI-CLXIII. The statue of Apollo Belvedere. 



NOTES 131 

84, CLXIV-CLXVI. Childe Harold is recalled. In Cantos 
I and II and in most of Canto III Childe Harold was the central 
figure of the poem. Critics said that the hero was Byron himself, 
but he denied it. In Canto IV the poet speaks in his own person, 
thus confessing that denial was useless. Even now the hero is 
recalled only to be dismissed. 

He is no more, ... if he was 
Aught but a phantasy. 

As usual the backward glance saddens the poet. He looks into 
an abyss; his sadness is deepened. Life seems to have nothing to 
offer. 

In contrast to this Byronic pessimism, see Tennyson in " The 
Making of Man ": 

Man is yet being made, and ere the crowning Age of ages 
Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape? 

And Browning says: 

I count life just the stuff 

To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 

85, CLXVII-CLXXII. The next six stanzas, which show 
Byron's deep feeling for his country, are in splendid contrast with 
the foregoing stanzas. The contrast is revealed in his words occa- 
sioned by the death of the Princess Charlotte, which occurred 
while the poet was in Venice. Byron's letters show how much he 
was moved. 

The Princess, the only daughter of George IV, then Prince 
Regent, was Heiress Presumptive to the British crown. Her char- 
acter was such that the hopes of England were centered in her. 
Hence the shock occasioned by her sudden death affected " the 
love of millions." 

87, 1549. Lo, Nemi! The poet's place of observation is now 
on the summit of the Alban Hills, whence he can behold the sea. 
Lake Nemi was also within his range of vision. Byron says of it: 
" The lake hes in a very deep bottom, so surrounded on all sides 
with mountains and groves that the surface of it is never ruffled 
with the least breath of wind, which, perhaps, together with the 
clearness of the water, gave it formerly the name of Diana's Look- 
ing Glass." Another says: " The basin of the Lago di Nemi is the 
crater of an extinct volcano. Hence the comparison to a coiled 
snake. Its steel-blue waters are never ruffled by the winds which 
lash the near-by ocean into fury. Hence its likeness to ' cherished 
hate,' as contrasted with ' generous and active wrath.' " 



132 NOTKS 

88, CLXXIV. From his vantage ground the poet sees another 
and similar lake, Albano, as well as the Tiber, the sea, and the 
coast of Latium, which suggested Virgil and Cicero's Sabine farm. 

CLXXV-CLXXVI, These two stanzas are retrospective, tell- 
ing of the journeys and experiences of Byron and his hero. As 
they must part, the poet feels they have some reward in being 
able to enjoy the beauties of earth and sea. 

1574. Calpe's rock. Gibraltar. 

1576. Symplegades. Two small islands near the Black Sea. 

89, 1585. Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place. 
Byron was so constituted that he longed for the grand things of 
nature: the Alps, the ocean, the desert. Daffodils and daisies do 
not possess for him the charm they had for Chaucer and Words- 
worth. 

1588. Love but only her. Whether Byron had in mind his 
sister or some genius of the place, we cannot positively state. Mr. 
E. H. Coleridge and some others are inclined to think the refer- 
ence is to his sister. In substantiation of this view, see the open- 
ing lines of Byron's '' Epistle to Augusta ": 

My sister! my sweet sister! if a name 
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine; 
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim 
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: 
Go where I will, to me thou art the same — 
A loved regret which I would not resign. 
There yet are two things in my destiny, — 
A world to roam through and a home with thee. 

The first is nothing — had I still the last. 
It were the haven of my happiness. 

On the other hand, we cite the poet's words from " The Witch 
of the Alps ": 

Beautiful spirit! in thy calm clear brow, 
Wherein is glass'd serenity of soul, 
Which of itself shows immortalitj', etc. 

Since the poet speaks of the desired presence as " one fair 
Spirit," and since he often longed for solitude, we are inchned to 
think he did not want any human being near him while in the 
frame of mind here expressed. Moreover, he asks for such a being 
from the elements, and adds: 

Do I err in deeming such inhabit many a spot 
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. 



NOTES 133 

CLXXVIII. In such stanzas as this some see, and rightly, the 
influence of Wordsworth. It surely suggests " Lines Written a 
Few Miles above Tintern Abbey." This passage marks one of 
the heights of Byron's achievement and shows a noble ecstacy, 
which he felt beyond the power of expression: 

Which I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

90, CLXXIX. This is probably the best known of all of 
Byron's stanzas and must endure as long as the language. Let 
the pupil seek for the secret of the power the Unes express. There 
are similar lines among the works of other poets; can you name 
them? 

91, CLXXXII. This stanza is unsurpassed in showing the 
contrast between the unchangeable ocean and the transitoriness 
of all that man had built. " Such as creation's dawn beheld, 
thou rollest now." " Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are 
they? " 

CLXXXIII. Adjectives are great revealers of literary power 
and taste. Note the effectiveness of Byron's adjectives in this 
stanza: " Dark-heaving — boundless, endless and sublime, . . . 
dread, fathomless, alone." See also line 1611, " unknelled, un- 
cofRned, and unknown." 

CLXXXIV. Byron's lines about the ocean are here height- 
ened into greater interest by the personal touch. 

92, 1656. As I do now. The poet has, without mentioning it, 
changed his point of view from where he began his apostrophe to 
the ocean. Now he stands on the shore and in imagination 
strokes the water tenderly, as he would his horse's mane. 

Having told his story, or having used his available material, 
the poet brings his poem to a rather sudden close, and yet with 
dignity and not too abruptly. The interest is sustained until the 
end. 

CRITICAL ESTIMATES OF CHILDE HAROLD 

" Childe Harold is one woven mass of beauty and intellectual 
gold from end to end." — W. M. Howitt. 

" In his Childe Harold he assumes a lofty and philosophic 
tone, and ' reasons high of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and 
fate.' .... Lord Byron has strength and elevation enough to 
fill up the moulds of our classical and time-honored recollections 
and to rekindle the earliest aspirations of the mind after great- 
ness and true glory with a pen of fire." — W. M. Howitt. 

" Byron's mind was the battlefield of contending impulses. . . . 
The intensity of his feelings imparts to his style a splendor and 



134 NOTES 

passion that raises it [Childe Harold] far above the diction of his 
earher poems. . . . Looking at his poetry from a purely lyrical 
standpoint, it is surely impossible for any man not to be carried 
away on the tide of its power and passion." — W. H. Courthope. 

" Childe Harold may not be, nor do we believe he is, Lord 
Byron's very self, but he is Lord Byron's picture sketched by 
Lord Byron himself." — Walter Scott. 

"The poem is a glorified guide-book; but it is something more, 
for in the person of his hero Byron creates a type which repre- 
sents modern romance, modern melanchol}^ (when the Revolu- 
tionary passions remained unsatisfied and the Revolutionary 
faiths were obscured), and, with these, the capacities for wide and 
varied pleasure proper to a time of culture, of travel, and cosmo- 
politan sympathies and interests."— Edward Dowden. 

" The third and fourth cantos placed him on the platform of 
the Dii Majores of English verse. These cantos are separated 
from their predecessors, not by a stage, but by a gulf. Previous 
to their publication, he had only known how far the force of 
rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand and from 
the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the 
mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Words- 
worth and the happy companionship of Shelley played their part 
in fostering." — John Nichol. 

"Not alone! wher'er thou bidest; 

For we know thee what thou art. 
Ah! if from the day thou hidest, 

Still to thee will chng each heart. 
Scarce we venture to lament thee, 

Singing, envious of thy fate; 
For in storm and sun were lent thee 

Song and courage, fair and great." 
Goethe. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

Concerning " The Prisoner of Chillon " little need be said. It 
does not abound in historical allusions like Childe Harold's Pil- 
grimage. There is nothing to divert us from the poem itself, 
which can best be enjoyed, in spite of its sadness, by imagining 
one's self in the place of the prisoner and sharing his meditations. 
It is well, in reading, to keep in mind the topic of each of the four- 
teen stanzas and to note the transitions in the poem and in the 
thought of its hero. 



NOTES 135 

The fact that Byron called the poem " a fable " warns us 
against considering it historical, even though it is about an his- 
torical character. In fact, as the poet himself tells us, he did not 
know the history of Bonnivard when he wrote the poem. Sailing 
on Lake Geneva in 1816 with his friend Shelley, Byron was im- 
pressed with the old castle of Chillon, so picturesquely situated on 
the northern shore of the lake; its romance and its forbidding 
dungeons appealed to his imagination. He wrote the poem at 
Ouchy, a little village on the lake near Geneva, where he was de- 
tained for two days on account of bad weather. The poem is well- 
nigh perfect and it gives us a glimpse of the poet at his best, for 
in this noble study of imprisonment there is no touch of mis- 
anthropy. 

Scholars have called attention to the fact that there are some 
echoes in the poem of the character of UgoHno (Dante's Inferno, 
XXXII, 124), and Shelley testifies that Byron had studied that 
character. It is more than probable that the study, the sight of 
the castle, a few scant facts about Bonnivard, and the detention 
on account of the weather united in ripening the occasion for 
Byron to write this poem. 

93, I. The use of the first person gives a vividness which could 
be imparted to the poem in no other way. Note how much is said 
of the family in a few words in this opening stanza. Then the at- 
tention is focussed upon the three surviving brothers. Note, also, 
that Byron represents the hero and his brothers as suffering for 
religious views, while the historical Bonnivard suffered for a 
political offense. 

What effect is secured by making lines 2 and 3 dimeters? What 
is the versification of the poem? Why is it especially effective for 
such a poem? 

94, II. Note the description of the dungeon. What is the 
effect of mentioning the single ray of light? Has the poet suc- 
ceeded in creating a suitable atmosphere? If so, how has he done 
it? 

III-V. Stanza iii gives the situation of the three: " and thus 
together — yet apart," and then, in stanzas iv and v, the charac- 
teristics of the brothers are given. Tell what these character- 
istics are, in your own words. 

97, VI. Note how the poet gradually makes us feel the isola- 
tion of the prison, *' a double dungeon, wall and wave." The cas- 
tle itself is imprisoned by the lake, which is almost a thousand 
feet deep near the castle. Leman is the old name for Lake 
Geneva. 

A few weeks after writing this poem, Byron wrote the following 
sonnet on Lake Leman : 



136 NOTES 

Rousseau — Voltaire — our Gibbon — and De Stael — 

Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore, 

Thy shores of names Uke these! wert thou no more, 

Thy memory thy remembrance would recall: 

To them thy banks were lovely as to all. 

But thej' have made them lovelier, for the lore 

Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core 

Of human hearts the ruin of a wall 

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee. 

How much more, Lake of Beauty, do we feel, 

In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, 

The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal. 

Which of the heirs of immortality 

Is proud, and makes the death of glory real! 

VII, VIII. In these two stanzas Byron describes the death of 
the two brothers. Note the difference in the two accounts, and 
t he different emotions produced in the heart of the survivor. How 
does the poet make especially vivid his grief at the death of the 
younger brother? Again note the dimeter lines and the effect. 

What is meant by the last two lines of stanza viii? 

101, IX. In some respects stanza ix is the most effective in 
the poem. Note the details given by the poet in describing how 
the prisoner gradually lost consciousness. Especially examine 
lines 240-250. The effect of the series of negatives in lines 245, 
246, is exquisite. Byron was strong in diction, especially in the 
use of adjectives: " A sea of stagnant idleness, blind, boundless, 
mute, and motionless! " 

102, X. Here we learn of the awakening. Nothing could be 
more effective than to have the unconscious prisoner recalled by 
the song of a bird, " the sweetest song ear ever heard." Byron 
makes his descriptions of the slow processes most effective by 
dwelling upon their gradual nature. " By dull degrees came back 
my senses." 

Note also the gradual description of the bird, as the prisoner 
came to notice it more minutely, and the return to the song, " that 
said a thousand things and seemed to say them all for me." It is 
not strange that he wondered if it were " a visitant from Para- 
dise." At first, before he fully realized the new situation, he won- 
dered if the bird was not the spirit of his brother; but when the 
bird flew away he felt anew his loneliness. 

104, XI. But conditions improved: the keepers became more 
compassionate; he was allowed to walk around. What is the 
etymology of profaned ? 

XII. He climbed the wall for a look at God's out-of-doors. 



NOTES 137 

He felt the whole world would be a prison to him, and yet the 
thought of a glimpse of the mountains, even through barred 
windows, was some consolation. 

105, XIII. He saw the view, and the poet describes the de- 
tails of it with fidelity and effectiveness. But all he saw only 
caused " new tears," for it emphasized his confinement. The 
darkness was like a load upon him, but the rest, after the effort, 
was welcome. 

What figure of speech is " a thousand years of snow "? 
Note the emotional power of this stanza, and its suggestive- 
ness. 

106, XIV. Here we see the deadening effect of the imprison- 
ment. The prisoner had lost interest in the outside world. His 
very surroundings had become a part of him; his higher nature 
seemed to be atrophied. He did not even take note of time! How 
much is told and how much more suggested by the expressions, 
" I learned to love despair," and " my very chains and I became 
friends," and " I regained my freedom with a sigh." 

Having read the poem carefully, until you are familiar with its 
details, read it again leisurely, to enjoy it as a whole. Does the 
poem sadden you, or do you get something else, something better, 
from it? 

THE SONNET ON CHILLON 

Although the sonnet was not written till later, it was prefixed 
to " The Prisoner of Cliillon." We place it after the poem, w^here 
it more logically belongs and makes a most fitting close, with its 
note of victory. It tells of the real Bonnivard, whose history 
Byron had learned since completing the poem. Byron is always 
eloquent when speaking of Liberty. 

We are reminded by this poem of Lovelace's words: 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for a hermitage: 
If I have freedom in my love 

And in my soul am free. 
Angels alone, that soar above, 

Enjoy such liberty. 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

The Life of Byron 

1. What in Byron's early environment accounts for many of the 

characteristics that afterward distinguished him? 

2. What had his early education, or lack of education, to do 

with his subsequent career? 

3. Tell about Byron's first trip to the continent. What poems 

grew out of this trip? 

4. Comment upon Byron's marriage and separation from his 

wife. 

0. Why did Byron go to the continent the second time? 

6. Comment upon the attitude of society toward him after his 

fall from favor. 

7. What can you say of Byron's custom of putting himself into 

his poems? 

8. How do you account for Byron's morbid desire for a bad 

reputation? 

9. What noble qualities did Byron possess? 

10. Outhne Byron's wanderings on the continent. Who were 

some of his associates? 

11. In what way was his going to Greece characteristic of him? 

12. What is Bryon's place in literature? 

13. What great contemporaries appreciated Byron and his 

poetry? 

Childe Harold. Canto IV 

1. When and how did Byron gather the material for Childe 

Harold f 

2. The first two cantos are very different from the last two. 

What is that difference and how do you account for it? 

3. Canto HI has been called the best of the four cantos. In 

what respect is the statement true? 

4. How do you account for the superior qualities of Canto IV? 

5. Judging from Canto IV, what could you infer as to the habits 

of observation and reflection characteristic of the writer? 

6. Trace on the map (p. 110) the journey of Byron through 

Italy as related in Canto IV. 
139 



140 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 

7. Which do you consider the better, Byron's descriptions of 

nature or his descriptions of buildings, monuments, etc.? 
Give reasons. 

8. The poet Shelley influenced Byron. Tell in what way and 

point out a passage in the poem to illustrate your answer. 

9. Answer a similar question in regard to Wordsworth. 

10. How do you account for the frequent outbursts of sadness, 

often amounting almost to despair? 

11. Why does Byron speak mostly in the first person in Canto IV, 

instead of speaking through the character of his hero 
Childe Harold, as in the other cantos? 

12. What are your favorite pa.«!sages in Canto IV? Mention 

four, with reasons for your preference. 

13. Judging from Childe IJarokVs Pilgrimage, what do you con- 

sider Byron's most noteworthy characteristics as a poet? 

14. Byron is called a poet of revolt. Is there evidence of his 

revolutionary tendencies in this poem? If so, what is it? 

15. Comment on Byron's love of freedom as that love is reflected 

in this poem. 

16. Comment on Byron's o])inions concerning the effects of the 

French Revolution as ho gives them in this poem. 

17. What five great Italian writers does Byron mention in 

Canto IV? What can we learn as to his appreciation oi" 
these writers from what he says of them? 
IS. Comment on Byron's opinion of Horace, and account for 
that opinion by giving Byron's reason for it. 

19. What is the significance of Byron's references to the Medici? 

20. What are the chief objects of interest in Venice mentioned by 

BjTon? 

21. What most attracted the poet's attention to Florence? 

22. Name five of the principal objects of interest in Rome that 

especially interested Byron. Tell which of these seem to 
have impressed him most and why. 

23. What inspired the poet's most noteworthy expressions on 

love? 

24. What do you consider the best example of Byron's power to 

express pathos? 

25. Where in the poem does Byron refer to England and how 

does he do it? 

26. Where and how does he refer to his sister? 

27. Comment upon Byron's comparison of Csesar and Napoleon. 

28. Where in Canto IV does Byron assume the role of a prophet? 

How far have his prophesies come to pass? 

29. Why is Childe Harold recalled in stanza clxiv? 

30. Cite a passage in proof of Byron's patriotism. 



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 141 

31. Comment on Byron's apostrophe to the Ocean. 

32. Illustrate, by reference to specific passages, Byron's use of 

words. 

33. Comment on his manner of closing the poem. 

34. What is your estimate of the canto as a whole? 

35. What do you consider Byron's best qualities as seen in 

Canto IV? 

36. Do you feel inclined to read more of Byron? Why? 

The Prisoner of Chillon 

1 . What circumstances led to the writing of this poem? 

2. Who was Byron's companion at the time of the writing of 

this poem? 

3. How far is this poem historical and how far pure invention? 

4. What poem had Byron been reading that might have in- 

fluenced him in writing "The Prisoner of Chillon"? 

5. What would you give as the theme of the poem? 

6. What can be learned concerning Byron from this poem? 

7. What kind of feelings are mostly appealed to in this poem?. 

How does the poet make that appeal? 

8. Mention two examples of effective description in this poem. 

9. How does Byron arouse, maintain, and increase our interest 

as the poem advances? 

10. What is your conception as to the character of the surviving 

brother? How does the poet arouse our sympathy with 
him? 

11. What opinions of his own does Byron express in this poem? 

12. What is the artistic effect of introducing the incident of the 

singing of the bird? 

13. What is the effect of the view of nature upon the prisoner? 

14. What is gained by having the prisoner tell his own story? 

15. What effect has the poem upon you? 

Sonnet on Chillon 

1. What is the biographical value of this sonnet? 

2. Comment on the poetic value of this sonnet. 



MAR 24 19<« 



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